For this week's children's book, I selected The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. In the award-winning book, a beautiful fish learns to make friends by giving away his most prized possessions. Not only is the book visually stunning with foil-stamping and dazzling colors on every page (don't be fooled by the faded library cover in this photo), but the universal message about sharing and kindness leads to great discussions with children!
After reading The Rainbow Fish, we began constructing our own rainbow fish.
Materials:
- Fish printout
- Washable paint - all colors
- Celery (cut up in 2-inch pieces)
- Sequins
- Googly eyes (large)
- Glue gun
I did minimal prep for this craft by printing out the fish shape on card stock. (Here is the free template that I used: Rainbow Fish Template.) I also pre-cut the celery and attached the large googly eye beforehand.)
I dispensed a small amount of each paint color on a paper plate and gave my son a piece of celery for each color. He loved the novelty of painting with celery and how the shape it created resembled a fish scale!
Once he was satisfied with his celery stamping, I gave him a small amount of silver sequins and he dropped them onto the parts of the fish that had "globs" of paint.
For the snack/recipe portion of this mini-lesson, I simply served Pepperidge Farm Goldfish Colors!
