Rock Fish (Linda Kranz inspired)

I love the book "Only One You" by Linda Kranz.  First of all the messages it sends children are wise and wonderful and secondly she is an amazing rock artist.

What you need:

• Rocks (all shapes and sizes, we used rocks from the rock pile out of the front of my house, left overs from the river I built)
• Paint
• Permanent Markers (including some metallic ones)
• Mod Podge
• Paint brushes (I only supplied small ones to encourage detailed work)
• Water buckets and nail brushes
• Lots of rags for drying rocks

How To:

• Ask the children to go and collect some rocks
• Get them to wash and scrub them in the buckets
• Dry with a cloth
• Paint
• Let dry
• Add further details with permanent markers (we did this the following week when rocks were completely dry)
• Add a layer of Mod Podge

The Results:

I really like how these turned out.  I also had some frame backings left over from another project so some children painted these and we hot glued their rocks onto them to display.  I thought the Mod Podge would seal the rocks and ensure the paint would hold up in the rain yet I was wrong about this.  It went all funny and white when it got wet.  So keep this in consideration if you want to use these outdoors.  Another varnish of some sort would probably work better.

fish hot glued onto a frame

We also had some other rock creatures painted as well.  I asked them all to paint two fish and then they could move onto other creatures if they got into it.  The white rocks and owls were inspired by a post on Red Ted Art - thanks!  Interestingly some children did their two rocks and claimed that was enough whilst others happily painted rocks for over an hour.  I had a back up project for those who tired of painting rocks or were fast workers - Linda Kranz inspired rock fish paintings.  The children painted a blue sea background and then on a separate piece of paper they drew fish (and other sea creatures) and painted these.  The following week when we added further details with the permanent markers to the rock fish they also did this to their paintings.  These were then cut out and glued to the blue sea backgrounds.

Cheers
Fiona