Fishing around!

I always try to start off my first days of classes with a little bit of "art." Something fun and easy that that kids love.  Something so the kids don't say "are we gonna do any art today?" at the end of class.  :)

  Painted paper is just that.  I have a small stash of painted paper left from last year, but I needed to add to it for the projects coming up.  I had planned to do fish in 1st grade, and something different for the other grade levels, but then saw the gorgeous bulletin board that my awesome art teacher friend Michelle did over at tinyartroom.wordpress.com and decided I would love to create a school wide display too!  So I kinda copied her.  But I think she's ok with it.  Although I didn't ask.  Maybe I should?  Nah.  :) 

I also checked out Cassie Stephens' lesson featuring the book, You Be You and loved the painted rock flying fish from the illustrations so we used that to kick off this project.  

First of all, a little about how I handle painted paper projects.  I tried putting containers of scraps for the kids to use for small projects, but I couldn't stand the way the containers looked as if they'd thrown up all over the tables by the end of the day.  Not to mention all the wasted paper that kids didn't want to use just because it wasn't a big enough sheet.  So... I cut the paper down in sizes, letting them choose a big sheet for the body, a small sheet for the face, and then I cut lots of little squares for all the details:

Nice and neat, and very little waste!  Yay.  

Now on to the fish!  We started with an oval for the body, traced the front of the oval onto the smaller piece for the face, then cut and glued those together.  This is as far as some classes got the first day.  The next class we started adding the details like fins, tails, and scales.  I try to encourage them to use the ENTIRE square, just trimming the edges to change the shape, so we don't have tiny little details or wasted paper.  They are turning out pretty awesome so far. I can't wait to share the finished ones!  

Here are a few in progress and I'll update as we go!