Rainbow Fish Art

I literally have hundreds of children's books from my teaching days.  Some have made their way into our collection, and some remain in boxes in the basement waiting for the right time to make their debut.

Besides just a random collection of books, I use to do an author of the month.  Each day after lunch and recess, we would unwind at our meeting spot by reading from our author. That meant I needed a minimum of 20 books from each author.  Over time I collected enough books for each month.  So I have over 20 Dr. Seuss, Clifford books, Curious George, Berenstein Bears, Eric Carle, and more.

One of the collections that I recently brought up for Olivia was the Rainbow Fish book by Marcus Pfister.  At some point I brought up one of Rainbow Fish books that had flaps and she really got into it.  In general, she is less interested in the actual Rainbow Fish book and enjoys the smaller readers.  She's already picked out her favorites and, of course, has the words memorized. :)

So when I was thinking about a craft to do, I thought I would tie in her current reading favorite.

I printed off an outline of Rainbow Fish on light blue cardstock.

Then I used a craft punch and cut circles out of different colored paper.

Then I just dribbled glue all over and let Olivia get to work.

In true Olivia fashion, she chose to do one color at a time.  She started with purple because it's her favorite color.  Then she went on to pink for mommy.  She is always very deliberate about her choices.

Last up was the googley eye.

In order to cover the whole fish, some of her circles hung off the edge.  After it had dried a bit I trimmed those off so that it still held it's proper shape.

The finished product! 

The "shimmery scales" are aluminum foil.

Decorating our fridge for a season.  I think it turned out great!