Students will use the outline of their shoe as the basic shape for a fish.
By Aaron Kinn [Aaron is a teacher at DePue Schools in DePue Illinois] with images from Elisabeth Paquin’s students.
What You Need:
- Shoes
- Pencil
- 9×12 paper (or bigger if you want to make an aquarium)
- Crayons or Markers
- Watercolor or Tempera Paint (optional)
What You Do:
- Have students take off one of their shoes and trace the bottom of it onto paper. Or, use a shoe template.
- Then, using the shoe outline as the fish outline, have students create fins, gills, eyes, mouth, and scales on their fish.
- When the drawing is complete have students color the fish with markers, or create a crayon resist drawing.
- *Note: You can have them cut out their fish and glue them on a huge piece of paper, and then have them draw a background. This looks like the fish are swimming in an aquarium.
The kids really get a kick out of taking their shoes off in class, and using them to make art!
Above Image: Adventures of an Art Teacher.
Above Images: Elizabeth Paquin, Hush and Color
Elizabeth Paquin from Hush and Color does this lesson with her Kindergarten class every year! First, they review lines and introduce new ones. Then, they discuss how lines close to make shapes. After that, they take a shoe template and turn it in to a fish. Sometimes she has the children draw with crayon and add paint over top while other times they just use paint.
