Rainbow Fish Weaving
The Rainbow Fish is a favourite tale. It shares the story of a fish that has special shiny scales. After hearing other fish praise his beauty .the fish ends up feeling it is better than the rest. It is only after the other fish start ignoring him that he seeks help from an octopus. He is advised to share his shiny scales with others. This is a wonderful book to explore the benefits of sharing with others. I bet after hearing this book your children will have experiences with sharing that they will want to share. After discussing their sharing stories it might be fun to make a rainbow fish. This craft focuses on working on fine motor skills and weaving. Your children will probably focus on making a fun fish.
The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister can be purchased from local bookstores and we have provided our affiliate links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk for ease of shopping.
More Summer Themed Paper Plate Crafts for Kids to Make
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Materials Needed
Cotton Balls (optional)
Plastic Forks (optional)
Sponges (optional)
Old Toothbrushes (optional)
Making the Woven Rainbow Fish
This craft will need to be done in two steps. Children will first need to paint the fish and then they will need to weave in its scales.
You can have your children cut a fish shape out of a plate on their own or you can cut out the fish for them.
More The Rainbow Fish Inspired Crafts and Activities for Kids
Painting the Fish
Children can use a variety of painting tools to paint the plate blue. We used a wide paint brush but any of the other optional materials from the supply list could be used as well.
Weaving the Scales
Children will need to cut horizontal lines into the paper plate. If you think this will be too challenging for them, you can cut the slots for them.
Then children will need to weave sparkly pipe cleaners along with plain pipe cleaners over and under the slits.
They can next twist the pipe cleaners up and down with their fingers to make them look more scale like
When they have pipe cleaners right where they want them, they can bend the pipe cleaners start or end in the front backwards. The pipe cleaners that start or end in the back can be twisted together with the ones that have been bent backwards.
The final step is to add a large wiggly eye. You can glue it in place with a glue stick or liquid glue.
Deirdre from JDaniel 4's Mom
Deirdre is the founder and author of JDaniel 4’s Mom. A teacher from South Carolina. She has 1 son JDaniel 4th. He is ten years old.
A specialist in Technology Integration as well as Early Elementary teaching she can be found sharing hands-on learning over on her blog.