1st grade Rainbow Fish

First graders read the book The Rainbow Fish which is a story about a beautiful fish who doesn’t want to share his shiny scales. It teaches a great lesson to students about sharing and how making others happy can make you happy! We talked about lines, shapes, and color with this lesson. First we started out with a white oil pastel to draw the sand, seaweed and bubbles. After that, we painted with cool colors for the underwater sea life, and we noticed how watercolor paint and oil pastels have a water-resistant reaction. Very cool! When students returned to their dry paintings the following week, we painted a mixture of glue and water all over a piece of aluminum foil, and then put cut out tissue paper all over it. Then, the third week, we cut out the fish from the aluminum foil, glued on an eye, and put it altogether! I am pretty sure this is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen! (‘Til the next project, I’m sure!)