Sharpies or other permanent marker, black and colored
spray glue
small squares of felt
q-tips
pencil/erasers
Students began by writing their names in pencil on cardboard. They traced their names in glue, then yarn.
Students write their names in glue and yarn.
Next they added decorative glue/yarn lines. I sprayed the plates with spray glue and slapped on a piece of pre-cut foil.
Students carefully polished the foil with felt squares. This helps the foil adhere to the cardboard and smooths the foil. A q-tip is good for polishing tight areas. Finally, they got to the best part: coloring in with jewel-tone colored Sharpies. Black sharpie looks good too! Remind students to avoid coloring the raised yarn lines.
I have admired the fabulous yarn-wrapped cardboard fish mobiles shown on a couple of elementary art blogs. I wanted to do the project with kindergarten as part of a whole-school ocean-themed art installation to be hung later this spring….
Kindergarteners created yarn-wrapped cardboard fish. Allow two 40-minute classes.
Materials:
Thin cardboard approx 8″x10″
black marker
scissors
crayons or markers
yarn cut in 6 foot lengths, one per student
large paper clips (for hanging)
hole punch (for hanging)
optional: bottlecaps and tacky glue/glue dots for eyes
Part one:
We started with thin cardboard rectangles about 8″x10″. We did a dot-to-dot directed draw of a simple fish shape.
Kinders started with a dot-to-dot directed draw. Don’t make base of tail too narrow or fish may rip.
Then the students cut out the fish shape. Because we used thin cardboard, 95% were able to cut the fish without help.
Now kinders add four dots to the top edge of the fish, and four dots to the bottom. A few kids made their dots too close together….so I’d say 90% did this task independently.
The kids use scissors to cut slits along the edges of the fish, stopping at the dots. 100% were able to do this task independently.
Now color both sides of the fish. We used regular crayons (I wish I had construction paper crayons to brighten the dull gray cardboard…next year!).
Part two:
Students finished coloring both sides of their fish. Each received a six-foot length of yarn (cut by me, lest you think I didn’t have ANY prep on this project…..) and wrapped the yarn around and around and up and down across their fish.
Wrapping the yarn was tricky for some students. I found out kids were more successful with the yarn wrap when I modeled it in front of the room (as opposed to on my document camera). I’d say about 70% could do this independently on their first attempt.
Optional: glue on eyes.
To hang the fish: use a hole punch to make one hole near the top edge and one at the bottom edge. Open a large paper clip to form a ‘S’ hook.
Open paper clip connects fish for mobile.
Connect your chain. I was able to make a hanging chain of five fish.
Inspiration for this projects comes from this post on the Fem Manuals blog and this post on the Deep Space Sparkle blog.
I believe that a lot of my lesson plans (at all grade levels) could be tweaked to increase student independence.
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