1st Grade: Rainbow Fish

For this project, I read the story Rainbow Fish and we discussed the moral of the story.  The first day we created our oceanic background.  We used cake tempera in blues, greens, and purples making puddles of color all over the page.  Then we sprinkled on a little salt to get a sea salty look.  Once dry, we drew in some seaweed.  For the fish, I did a step by step drawing on my marker board and had the kids follow.  All fish turned out so different, which  I love!  We used watercolor pencils first to color in the fish, then used a wet brush to blend the watercolor pencils.  Finally, the students got to pick one scale to be their sparkly scale- added some glue and finally some silver glitter....the kids loved this one and wanted to have more scales covered, but I reminded them of the message in the story- every fish only had one sparkly scale in the end!!! Then, I got the "oh yeah..." ;)