OK, friends and crafters, I am asking for your ideas.
Wild Thing’s class needs to make ocean animals for a school library contest. The winning class gets $50 worth of books from the book fair next week.
I am going to supervise/help the children make the animals. I’d love to see this teacher win the books because she doesn’t always get the help she needs. Her class was formed later in the year as an overflow class.
Here are the guidelines as I see them:
- The teacher would like the children to make different animals. Some duplication is OK, but she’d like them to be different for the most part.
- We have to have the animals completed and ready for hanging by Monday.
- This needs to be a pretty simple project that can be done by first graders and can be completed in a short amount of time (I’ll be pulling a few students out of class at a time). By short amount of time, I’m thinking about 30 minutes or so. Is that reasonable? Do you think we can do it in less time?
Come on you guys! I know you won’t let me down. What ideas do you have? What’s worked for you?
Thanks for your help! I’m forever grateful. I really am.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh don’t ask me. I good for nothing except reading and movie lines… and I make a mean pan of sausage gravy and biscuits. Other than that, I’m useless.
I say buy it all and pretend you’re kids made the sea creatures. Just take all the tags off and they’ll never know…
Maybe try tissue paper. If you stuffed tissue paper with other crumpled up pieces of paper you could have the kids sculpt octopi, crabs, whales, eels, starfish, etc. Use yarn to tie off the places where joints should be. Does this make sense? Crumpling paper would be easy, the kids like choosing what colors to use, then glue googly eyes on the faces. (the animals that is, not on the kids’ faces
You HAVE to make a sea horse. But I have no idea how you would do that. Isn’t this Grandma D’s “thing”? Yeah, you definately need to ask someone more crafty than me.
I loves the google on things like this.
I found this site that does craft stuff for bible school. It has a really cute star fish at the very end of the page that might work. I dont think you would have to use beads.
http://www.daniellesplace.com/html/paperplate/#starfish
Good luck!
The crumpled tissue paper idea is a good one! Cut out different ocean creatures from heavy duty contruction paper or poster board, pick out different tissue colorsand cut it into pieces around 1 inch, and set the kiddoes up with cups of glue (mixed with a teensy bit of water), Q-tips, and the tissue.
They ball up the tissue and dip it in the glue mixture, then stick them on the paper in a pattern they create…using the Q-tips to manuever the pieces around.
You can make the tissue pieces larger, which will make the tissue balls bigger, which will fill up the paper faster…and they can also paint the paper with the glue mix and THEN stick on the tissue wads…
Hope that helps!
Thought of another idea….involves the same basic cut out ocean creature shapes…but have them draw designs on the papers with white crayons (Draw heavy lines)…then paint the papers with water colors…the crayon resists the paint, leaving a cool design under the soothing water colors!!
Well … at the risk of being different … as in … “NO TISSUE PAPER AND GLUE FOR ME” … you could go to my favorite cookie cutter supplier in the whole wide world, order some cookie cutters and decorating supplies for quick delivery, and then make some sugar cookies from the pre-made dough, and put a hole at the top before baking.
Then, you can have the kids each decorate (use pre-made frosting) a sea creature and hang them with fishing line.
As far as I could see, they have a few fish, seal, whale, adorable sea horse, cute octopus, shark, crab, cute star fish, walrus, mermaid, seashell, pelican, puffin, lobster, dolphin, manatee, clown fish, etc.
They also have colors for frosting, recipes, sanding sugars, etc. OMG!!! I would die in cookie heaven if it were at all possible!
http://www.coppergifts.com/productcart/pc/advSearch_h.asp?keyWord=ocean&type=1&
Let us know what you do!!!
The first thing that popped to my mind was “manatee” which means “sea cow”, however they do live in the swampy areas of Florida so that might not count (I think there are ocean going ones in the Phillipines?).
My immediate thought was grey felt and those black jellybeans that are now on sale by the scad-load. Let the kids cut out an amorphous shape, draw a mouth with a Sharpie, then let the child glue on two black eyes…
I know, I’m horribly uncreative but perhaps felt would be more sturdy for the children to work with. They might have fun trying to free-form cut out an octopus on purple felt…
gah, sorry.
OK, just so happens that my son’s kindergarten class just finished a whole beach of sea creatures for display:
–jellyfish – clear plastic bowls (the bowl equivalent of a SOLO cup) with iridescent clear or white curling ribbon tied to holes punched in the rim, hung upside down with fishing line (these are, hands-down, SO CUTE!)
–crab – small paper plates (dessert-sized) cut in half and painted red with tempera. Crab is circle-side down, cut side up. Paint two ovals red also. Draw a line down middle of each oval lengthwise with a black Sharpie, and attach to either end of crab with half of a black chenille stem (or for those of us FIRMLY in Generation X, a pipe cleaner!)
For a starfish, use die-cut starfish shapes, with rice glued on top for texture. This is really a star with rounded corners, so you could use a star die and your scrapbooking corner rounder.
Rainbow fish: use coffee filters cut into fish shapes, and color with water-based markers, spraying with water for a tie-dyed look.
That’s all I remember off the top of my head – let me know if you need more ideas!
Melissa
misslisslee (at) yahoo (dot) com
I teach preschool, and I think I can help. If you can have all the supplies assembled by “animal”, and have it all ready to go, it shouldn’t take more than 20-30 minutes.
Octopus: styrofoam bowls, paint, yarn, tape, scissors, google eyes, glue
~paint the outside of the bowl, tape eight yarn “tentacles” on the underside, add google eyes to the top side. (or you can do contruction paper tentacles and glue cheerio “suction cups” down each one.
Crab: cheap white paper plates, paint, stapler, google eyes, construction paper to match the paint color, paper towels. glue or tape
~fold plate in half, stuff w/paper towels, and staple along the edge. (the flat side will be the bottom) Cut crab claws and legs out of const. paper and attach them to the crab. Paint both sides of the folded plate and add google eyes.
Puffer fish: paper bags, newspaper, construction paper, tape, markers, stapler
~color scales on the paper bag (it can be painted after stuffing if you prefer). Stuff bag with newspaper and staple it shut. Cut out fins, tail, etc. and attach to the bag. Add google eyes.
-have you figured out that it’s all about the google eyes yet?-
Sting ray: small pizza boxes (cut so they are flat and square), paint, yarn, stapler, google eyes,
~paint both sides of cardboard square, add a yarn tail, and add google eyes
Starfish: Construction paper, scissors, paper towels, glue, sand or cornmeal, stapler, paintbrush for the glue
~cut 2 stars per fish out of const. paper (make them fairly big). Staple each arm, them stuff with paper towels. When all done, brush both sides with glue and sprinkle with sand or cornmeal.
I have more suggestions, but this is already too long. Please email me if you need other ideas!
Happy crafting!
Sea Urchin -
Cut a painted styrofoam ball in half. Insert toothpicks for the spines. Put googly eyes on the tops of golf tees for the eyes.
Sounds like fun. I hope we get to see pictures.
ok by the time i found this you had so many great ideas here! and i have none. but i like melissa p’s ideas.
when i do crafts with ethan-6yr’s class, i use doublestick tape and glue dots. that way you don’t have to wait on glue to dry – things always get messed up before it’s dry, and it’s quicker this way.
Have you tried looking on DLTK? Good luck with this!