Handprint Sea Scene

Materials:

• Poster paint
• Small circular sponge
• 5 googly eyes
• White craft glue

Tissue Paper Fish

Age Group: 2 years to 6 years
Estimated Time: Under 15 minutes
Messiness: Medium

Materials:

• White craft glue
• Scissors
• Tissue paper cut into squares
• Googly eye
• Coloured cardboard paper

Method:

1. Cut out a simple fish shape from the coloured cardboard.
2. Spread white craft glue all over the cut-out in a thin layer - using a small spatula works perfectly.
3. Stick the pieces of tissue paper onto the glue. It's ok if the tissue paper goes over the edges as you can trim it off once it has dried.
4. Stick on the googly eye with the craft glue.

Speckled Beans Sea Bed

Age Group: 2 years (with help) to 8 years
Estimated Time: Under 30 minutes
Messiness: Medium

Materials:

• Paper plate
• Blue poster paint
• Speckled beans
• White craft glue
• Scissors
• Small piece of yellow cardboard paper
• Googly eye 

Method:

1. Paint the whole of the paper plate blue and put aside to dry.
2. Whilst drying, cut out a small, simple fish shape from the yellow cardboard.
3. Once the plate has dried, spread a thin layer of craft glue on the bottom third of the plate and sprinkle with speckled beans to create the sea bed.
4. Stick on the fish and googly eye.

Bottle Cap Fishes

Materials:

• Blue cardboard paper
• 4 bottle caps
• Glitter glue
• 4 googly eyes
• White craft glue
• Orange paper
• Scissors
• White poster paint

Method:

1. Decorate the bottle caps with the glitter glue.
2. Use the craft glue to stick on one googly eye per cap.
3. Cut out 4 triangles as tail fins from the orange paper.
4. Use the craft glue to stick the triangles onto the paper.
5. Decorate the triangles with glitter glue.
6. Use the craft glue to stick the bottle caps onto the card, overlapping onto the triangles.
7. Use the white paint on the tip of a paintbrush to create bubbles.

Cabaret Paper Plate Fish

Materials:

• Paper plate
• Acrylic paint
• Sequins
• Googly eye
• Feather
• White craft glue
• Scissors
• Cardboard paper

Method:

1. Use the acrylic paint to paint the paper plate (I use acrylic as it gives a more professional, shiny finish)
2. Cut a mouth and use the cut out as a tail.
3. Stick the tail to the back of the fish with craft glue.
4. Decorate with paper hats, sequins and feather using craft glue to stick them into place.

Sequin CD Fish

Materials:

• CD
• Blue sequins
• Silver sequins
• Purple sequins
• Pink cardboard paper OR pink paint
• Purple cardboard paper OR purple paint
• White cardboard paper (if using paint)
• White craft glue
• Scissors

Method:

1. Use the craft glue to stick the sequins randomly onto the CD.
2. Leave to dry.
3. If using paint, paint a section of the white card pink and another section purple.
4. Cut out the now pink and purple card in the shapes of lips, fins and a tail.
5. If using coloured card, miss out step 3 and go to step 4.
6. Use craft glue to stick the card shapes onto the CD.

Paper Plate Fish

Age Range: 2 years to 6 years
Estimated Time: Under 30 minutes
Messiness: Medium

Materials:

• Paper plate
• Scissors
• Poster paint
• Different coloured tissue paper
• White craft glue
• Cellotape
• Small piece of white cardboard paper
• Black kokie

Method:

1. Use the poster paints to paint the paper plate and leave to dry.
2. Once dry, cut out triangle from the plate to make a mouth.
3. Stick the triangle that you just cut out on to the back of the fish as a tail. Use cellotape for this.
4. Spread a thin layer of craft glue over the fish and paste on little bits of tissue paper.
5. Cut out a circle from the white card as an eye and stick it on with the craft glue.
6. Use the black kokie to draw a dot inside the eye.

Coloured Macaroni Octopus

5 year old

Age Range: 5 years to 8 years
Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Messiness: High

Materials:

• Macaroni
• Different coloured poster paints
• 8 pipe cleaners
• Paper plate
• Hole punch
• Black kokie
• Coloured kokies / Coloured circular stickers

Method:

1. Using the hole punch, punch 8 holes around the bottom of the plate, equally spaced out.
2. Thread a pipe cleaner through each hole and secure it by twisting the top of the pipe cleaner so that it cannot come out.
3. Thread the macaroni onto the pipe cleaners from the bottom. Leave some space at the bottom of each pipe cleaner to be able to twist a small knot.
4. Paint the individual macaroni pieces different colours.
5. Use a black kokie to draw eyes and a mouth onto the paper plate.
6. Use the stickers or coloured kokies to decorate the paper plate.

Fork Imprint Puffer Fish

Age Group: 4 years to 10 years
Estimated Time: Under 10 minutes
Messiness: Medium

Materials:

• Black cardboard paper
• White cardboard paper
• Black kokie
• White poster paint 
• Yellow poster paint 
• Plastic fork
• White craft glue

Method:

1. Submerge the fork into white poser paint and press the painted fork onto the black card in a semi-circle pattern at the bottom on the page. You may have to put paint on the fork several times.
2. Follow the same procedure with the yellow poster paint, this time completing the top part of the  circle.
3. Paint on triangular ears in yellow and use the fork with white paint to make an imprint on them.
4. Cut out a small oval from the white card and draw a smaller black oval in the middle to create a snout. Stick this onto the middle of your fish with craft glue.
5. Cut out 2 small circles from the white card for eyes and draw in the pupils with the black kokie. Glue these on with craft glue too.

Suppliers:

• White poster paint - http://www.coralmoon.co.za/online-store.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=601&category_id=90
• Yellow poster paint - http://www.coralmoon.co.za/online-store.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=596&category_id=90
• Black kokie - http://www.coralmoon.co.za/online-store.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=587&category_id=90

Shark Fin Hat

Age Group: 3 years (with help) to 6 years
Estimated Time: Around 30 minutes
Messiness: Medium

Materials:

• Paper plate
• 2 A4 pieces of white cardboard paper
• Blue poster paint
• Scissors
• White craft glue
• Elastic
• Bostik glue
• Cellotape

Method:

1. Paint the paper plate and one piece of white card with the blue paint and let dry.
2. Out of the other piece of white card, cut out 8 triangles for shark teeth.
3. Once the blue card has dried, fold it in half and cut out a shark fin shape.
4. Glue the two sides of the shark fin together with white craft glue and let dry.
5. Secure the shark teeth on the under side of the rim of the paper plate with cellotape. 
6. Place a thin line of Bostik down the middle of the paper plate just big enough for the fin.
7. Hold the fin steady in the Bostik until the fin stays standing by itself. 
8. Poke holes in either side of the paper plate (behind the teeth) and attach elastic.

Suppliers:

• Blue poster paint - http://www.coralmoon.co.za/online-store.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=598&category_id=90

Hand Print Crab

Age Group: 2 years (with help) to 6 years
Estimated Time: Under 15 minutes
Messiness: Low

Materials:

• Blue paper
• Orange paper
• Red paper
• Scissors
• Pritt glue
• Black kokie

Method:

1. Trace both your child's hands on the red paper and cut them out.
2. Cut out a wavy pattern about a third from the bottom of the orange paper.
3. Stick the orange cut-out onto the bottom of the blue paper with Pritt glue to mimic sand.
4. Glue the red hand cut-outs onto the blue/orange page. Slightly overlap the one hand onto the other so that they are joined.
5. Draw black dots in the thumbs as eyes and draw on a mouth.

Suppliers:

• Black kokie - http://www.coralmoon.co.za/online-store.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=610&category_id=90

Glitter Fish

Age Group: Under 2 years to 5 years
Estimated Time: Under 15 minutes
Messiness: Medium

Materials:

• Glitter
• Small beads
• White craft glue
• 1 piece of coloured cardboard paper
• Kokies or crayons
• Ice-cream stick
• Scissors
• A little hand!!

Method:

1. Trace your child's hand onto the coloured card and cut it out.
2. Decorate the cut-out with kokies or crayons.
3. Once finished, apply a thin layer of white craft glue all over the decorated side of the fish.
4. Sprinkle the little beads and glitter onto the glue.
5. Use craft glue to stick an ice-cream stick onto the back of the fish.

Pipe Cleaner Fishing

Very simple, fun and different! Generally better for younger children - under 4 years old.

Age Group: 2 years to 4 years
Estimated Time: Depends on child's concentration span
Messiness: Low

Materials:

• Pipe cleaners
• Magnet and string / magnetic fishing rod
• Blue card or paper (optional)

Method:

1. Cut out the blue card or paper into a pond type of shape.
2. Twist the pipe cleaners into a basic fish shape.
3. Start fishing!
4. Because the pipe cleaners and made out of metal, they are magnetic!

Under the Sea Theme

Age Group: 3 years (with help) to 10 years

Estimated Time: 30 to 45 minutes

Messiness: High

Materials:

• A1 sheet of blue cardboard paper or 6 A4 pieces stuck together
• A few short strands of raffia
• Green pipe cleaners
• Soup mix
• White craft glue
• Cellotape
• Soup Mix Starfish (see below)
• Paper plate crab (see below)
• Jellyfish (see below)
• Shark (see below)
• Hand print rainbow fish (see below)
• Hand print octopus (see below)

Method:

1. We did the sea bed first by applying a thin layer of craft glue to the bottom of the page and sprinkling on soup mix.
2. We then stuck on our crab with craft glue.
3. The soup mix starfish was stuck on next, also with craft glue.
4. We then made our jellyfish, shark, rainbow fish and octopus.
5. Finally we cellotaped the raffia and green pipe cleaners onto the sea bed as seaweed.

Materials:

• Coloured piece of cardboard paper
• Soup mix / lentils
• Scissors
• White craft glue

Method:

1. Cut out a simple starfish shape from the coloured cardboard - as you can see, I'm no artist!!
2. Spread white craft glue down the middle of each tentacle.
3. Sprinkle the soup mix/lentils onto the glue.
4. Shake the excess soup mix/lentils off. 

Materials:

• Paper plate
• Red/orange poster paint
• Red/orange cardboard paper
• Stapler
• Scissors
• Black kokie

Method:

1. Paint the entire one side of the paper plate red or orange and set aside to dry.
2. Whilst drying, cut out 2 pincers and eyes.
3. Once the paper plate has dried, staple the paper plate in half.
4. Staple the pincers and eyes to the back of the paper plate.
5. Draw small black dots onto the eyes

Materials:

• White poster paint
• 6 equal length pieces of string
• White craft glue
• Scissors
• Coloured cardboard paper for the shark
• Googly eye

Method:

1. Firstly, we did the jellyfish.
2. We painted the jellyfish's head in white poster paint - it needed 2 layers to not be too transparent.
3. We then cut the string into 6 equal length pieces and daubed craft glue at the tops and bottoms, then stuck them down.
4. We then moved onto the shark.
5. Christopher insisted that the shark be red, so I cut out a simple shark outline out of red cardboard paper.
6. Christopher spread a thin layer of craft glue onto the back of the shark and stuck it down.
7. He then glued on the googly eye, also with craft glue.
8. I painted in teeth with the white poster paint.

Materials:

• Lots of different coloured poster paints
• 3 googly eyes
• White craft glue
• 3 small blue pom-poms
• A little hand!!

Method:

1. Firstly we did the fish. 
2. I painted each of Christopher's fingers and his thumb and palm different colours to create a rainbow fish. 
3. He then stuck on the googly eye with craft glue.
4. We used the blue pom-poms as bubbles and stuck them on with craft glue too.
5. We then moved onto the octopus.
6. I painted his hand purple to his insistence.
7. As a hand only has 5 fingers and an octopus 8 tentacles, I had to paint on 3 extras.
8. He then stuck on the googly eyes with craft glue.

Balloon Animals without the Twisting!

These are great fun to make. The finished product is enjoyed most by younger toddlers and children and the process of making them is appreciated best by children over about 5 years old.


Age Group: 3 years (with help) to 10 years
Estimated Time: Under 30 minutes
Messiness: Low

Materials:

• 2 balloons
• Permanent marker
• Cardboard paper
• Scissors
• Cellotape 

Method:

1. Blow up one of the balloons
2. Stick the other balloon onto the blown up balloon with cellotape to make a trunk
3. Cut out elephant shaped ears from cardboard paper
4. Cellotape the ears to the blown up balloon
5. Draw eyes and a mouth with the permanent marker

Materials:

• Balloon
• Cardboard paper
• Cellotape
• Permanent markers
• Scissors

Method:

1. Blow up the balloon
2. Cut out strips from cardboard paper to make the lion's mane
3. Cellotape the strips to the balloon
4. Draw eyes, nose and a mouth with the permanent marker (Don't forget the teeth!!)

Materials:

• Balloon
• Cardboard paper
• Permanent markers
• Scissors
• Cellotape

Method:

1. Blow up the balloon
2. Cut out a tail and a fin from cardboard paper 
3. Cellotape the tail and fin to the balloon
4. Draw eyes and a mouth with the permanent marker as well as the fish's patterns and scales
5. Use the tied end of the balloon as the nose for the fish

Footprint Insects

These are easy and simple to make. Kids love getting their hands and feet painted and enjoy the feeling of the paintbrush on their skin! The look on their faces when they see what their feet and hands have been turned into is absolutely priceless!!

Materials:

• Poster paint
• Googly eyes
• Black kokie
• Glitter glue