Expanding Scary Fish

This lesson produced so many giggles and "fake" screams - it was lots of fun.  The children just loved the concept of the hidden scary fish.  They opened and closed them millions of times.  This lesson was done by children 5 to 9 years.  It takes about 40 minutes.

I can't take credit for the idea I saw this on the website "Once Upon An Art Room". 

What you need:

• A3 white paper, folded (I just played around until I worked out how to get the folds about right.  I then prefolded the paper before the lesson as I imagined the children finding this difficult).
• Oil Pastels
• Blue Liquid Watercolour paint (optional - add glitter)
• Large Paintbrushes
• HB Pencils & Eraser

How To:

• Demonstrate how to draw a fish using the fold as the centre (I demonstrated an easy fish with an oval and triangle for a tail). 
• Ask the children to draw their fish with a pencil (I found using a pencil helpful as many found the concept of drawing the fish with the fold in the centre hard and we could rub out the pencil until we got it right, don't worry too much about pencil lines as the oil pastel covers them)
• Add an eye ensuring it is above the fold
• Expand the paper and fill in the blank space with a big mouth and teeth.  Fill in the tail.
• Colour fish using oil pastels ensuring they are applied very thick and covering all the white
• Outline in black oil pastel
• Add in bubbles with white oil pastel (optional)
• Paint over entire piece of paper with blue watercolour (we also used paper towels to dab away some to show ripples in the water)
• Allow to dry and then refold.

The Results:
 Some very scary fish.....-

Cheers
Fiona