Bismillaah
Skills: Decorating a fish bowl (aquarium), and during the craft activities practice colors, numbers 1 to 5 and scissor cutting skills, taking care of pets-fish. Other skills and learning activities are linked or can be found in the Fish theme or review themes column.
Art & Crafts - Five Fish on a Fish Bowl Craft
Skills: Number Recognition Practice 1 to 5 and Color Recognition
Print your choice of the fish bowl and five fish template in color or coloring page format. Suggestion: Separate/cut out the sections to present separately:
1. Coloring and Preparing the Fish Bowl (or Aquarium) - Pretend to Visit a Pet Shop
Learning about Fish and Taking Care of Pets discussion:
1. Distribute and present the fish bowl template only. Ask the children if they can recognize the image. Tell the children they are going to pretend they are going to a pet shop and "buy" colorful fish and prepare the fish bowl. We need to make sure we learn a little bit about fish and how to take care of them (visit Learning about Fish and Taking Care of Pets for a few facts or reading the online story). The bowl needs water so we need to color or paint the water in. Children can use crayons, pastels, coloring pencils or dab paint with sponges or cotton balls (mix white and blue to obtain a light blue shade). Set the fish bowls aside to dry if painted and proceed to distribute fish template portion and conduct your choice of related activities below.
2. Number & Color Practice:
*Color format: The color format is effective for the youngest children to recognize colors and numbers. Ask children to identify each color first, and point to each number and count each fish together in sequence with you. Make an individual demonstration of how each number is traced, then they can follow and try to trace with the matching color (crayons or coloring pencils) and fill the fish with the matching color.
*Black and White format: If you don't have color printing option you can still achieve the same effect as the color version by pre-selecting colors you wish to practice. Fill the fish outline manually with a marker, crayon or color pencil ahead of time, or for older children indicate to fill the outline with a color by following instructions for each fish: fill the outline for number 1 blue, fill outline for 2 green, and so forth. Have the children trace the numbers the same color as the outline. Make sure to make a demonstration of the tracing procedure in each instance.
3. Scissor Cutting Practice:
After the number and color practice promote scissor cutting. Encourage the children to cut out the fish. The idea is to have young children practice scissor cutting to strengthen hand muscles for other skills such as writing.
Other ideas:
1. Color Mixing: Practice mixing primary colors to achieve secondary colors. This color mixing postermay be useful to present this activity.
2. Easy Adding and Subtracting: After cutting out the fish do some adding and subtracting activities. Children place the fish in front of them. Remove one, how many are left?, remove 2, how many are left? Add one , how many fish do you have now? and increase, play the games different ways depending on the age.
4. Assemble the Craft, Review Concepts, Fish Song or Nursery Rhyme Activity:
Distribute the decorated fish bowl. Encourage the children to glue the fishes on the bowl. You may want to instruct to glue them in number sequence - pick and glue fish number one first and so forth. Have the children keep and hold their beautiful fish bowl and sing a fish song or refer to the craft for separate nursery rhyme activities. Review that we clean the water in the bowl frequently and keep the fish bowl away from the heat and sun and feed the fish every day.
Nursery Rhymes - Songs / Poem about Fish and Count
Here are two nursery rhymes to choose from. The first has a number of activities and printable materials to practice numbers and addresses letter F recognition. Select the one that you feel is more appropriate for your group and ages. These provide letter F alphabet and number practice.
Nursery Rhyme Activities: The Fish Counting Rebus Rhyme: One, two, three, four, five
Song & Finger play Instructions link: Five Little Fishies (external link)
Activity #5: Online Jigsaw Puzzle - Angelfish
Have fun with this 6-piece Angelfish online puzzle. Puzzles are great to develop problem solving skills. Everyone in the family can enjoy this puzzle - adjust the number of pieces by clicking on the shapes button.
Snack Idea: fishy crackers, baked fish sticks with vegetable dip
http://www.first-school.ws/activities/crafts/animals/ocean/five_fish_bowl.htm
