Paper Plate Fish Collage
Our last Under the Sea themed book based activity for Storybook Summer is a wonderful paper plate fish collage from Nicola at Crafty Kids at Home who is bringing alive the book Tiddler by Julia Donaldson one of our favourite under the sea-themed books.

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Thanks to Rainy Day Mum for inviting us over to join in with Story Book Summer. Under the Sea was the obvious topic for us to choose, as living by the sea it is a huge influence over many parts of our lives, including the books we read and the crafts that we do. The main problem for us, was which book to select. In the end we decided on one by our favourite author Julia Donaldson “Tiddler: The story telling fish.”
Tiddler is a fish with a big imagination and a bad sense of time keeping. He is always late for school, so to try and get around his teacher, he comes up with elaborate stories as to why he is late each day. Then one day his love of storytelling comes in very handy and leads to his most elaborate story yet…
- Hardcover Book
- julia-donaldson (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 32 Pages – 02/16/2025 (Publication Date) – Alison Green Books (Publisher)
All three of my children love this story, but only my 3 year old daughter Bella did this activity with me, as her big brothers were busy at school. A lot of the activities on my blog include all 3 of my children, but I do like to indulge each of them with some individual quality crafting time as well.
Read Next: More Fish Themed Books for Preschoolers
Our Tiddler Paper plate fish collage
Bella is really keen on cutting and sticking at the moment, so I decided that this would form the basis of our “Tiddler” activity.
I had recently bought a stack of paper plates for our craft supplies drawer and I thought that these would be perfect to make a fish collage with, so we set to work.

I cut strips from different coloured sheets of paper and then let Bella cut them into small mosaic style pieces to use on her fish collage. She showed great skill and concentration during this part of the activity. She is getting more confident each time she uses her scissors now, which is great to see.

Once she had a good pile of paper pieces ready she got busy with her glue, sticking them all over her paper plate. She was then keen to add on a googly eye (our favourite craft supply!) before adding on the fins that I had cut out for her (her cutting skills aren’t quite up to this yet!).

She then very proudly took her fish round to nanna’s later on that day and it is now pride of place in her kitchen.
Does your toddler like Disney – then why not make some Disney Paper Plate Crafts together
Read more from Nicola
How to make a bubble wrap jellyfish
Fine motor fishing in waterbeads
You can find Nicola over at Crafty Kids at Home http://www.craftykidsathome.com where she shares arts, crafts, messy play and baking ideas suitable for kids aged 2-7. All of her activities have been done by her kids and many of them have been done with all 3 of her children at the same time. Nicola and her family live on the east coast of Ireland, which is a huge inspiration for many of their activities. Nicola was a librarian before having her children, so books always have and always will be a big part of their lives.
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