Ocean Art!

Continuing with my ocean theme...here is an art project that the kids and I absolutely love!  First I read the Rainbow fish by Marcus Pfister and then the children color and paint their own rainbow fish or ocean scene with oil pastels and watercolors.

The first step I do is point out all of the colors on each page and ask the children after the read aloud which was their favorite and why?  Then I explain that we are going to make our own oceans and you can put in any ocean fish and sea creatures you want.  To do this project we use "special crayons" called oil pastels.  These are much brighter and they pop right off the page!  

After I the children draw what ever they want I explain that now we need to add blue water to make the sea creatures come alive and pop off the page.  The kids get a kick out of this and their eyes get huge when they see the colors resisting the water.  They usually all come up running and say "Look, look, mine is popping!"  I make sure to explain it needs to be blue so the water shows up and I do this project towards the end of the year because it does use a lot of the blue water color.

After they are done I use them to decorate our drama area "The Beach Cafe".  The kids love coming up to the pictures and seeing which one is theirs :)