Georgetown second grade artists have completed one of my favorite new projects..ever!
They created these sweet little clay fishies and carefully glazed them with beautiful patterns. Each child made three fish, adding interesting texture by pressing pasta into the wet clay.
Norman Rockwell “The Fishing Trip”
After learning a little bit about the famous American artist Norman Rockwell, who illustrated several magazine covers with fish related images, students created a “fish paper” background, strung their fish using a tricky slip knot, and placed them on the background for display. Fun fact – we used sepia paint to make the fish paper look “antique”. Sepia paint used to be made with a brownish pigment gathered from the ink sacs of…wait for it…cuttlefish!
This project is so creative! What a great idea! I LOVE them!
Thank you Jennifer – the project is a keeper!
love this! Norman Rockwell was my favorite growing up!
Thanks, Ann!
What is the background paper? I absolutely love this project! Would you be willing to share the background? Did you make it or did you find it somewhere. It’s awesome!
Thanks Jessica! I created the background paper by googling “fish images” and dragged images that I liked into a document. I then photocopied it on plain paper; after the kids glued this to cardboard, they stained the background brown with the instant coffee mixture. Sadly I do not have the background paper available to share, but you could easily create one of your own the same way.
How did you attach the fish to the cardboard? (wonderful project by the way!)
Thanks Jen! Well, we tried glue dots, but they didn’t work the greatest. I ended up using a dab of hot glue on the back of each fish, and a dab on the knotted part of the string. The beauty of glueing the fish down was that we could easily send them home – just the wrapped the cardboard in newsprint and away they went.