Skip to Content

Join The KinderArt Club, for Premium Art Lesson Plans.

Shoe Fish

Shoe Fish
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

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:

  1. Have students take off one of their shoes and trace the bottom of it onto paper. Or, use a shoe template.
  2. Then, using the shoe outline as the fish outline, have students create fins, gills, eyes, mouth, and scales on their fish.
  3. 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!

Shoe Fish lesson plan for kids

Above Image: Adventures of an Art Teacher.

Shoe fish from Elisabeth Paquin's students.KinderArt.com. Shoe fish from Elisabeth Paquin's students.KinderArt.com.

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.


Join Our Club

You are currently on the KinderArt.com site which features lots of free art activity ideas for kids (I hope you are enjoying them!) HOWEVER, if you are looking for more detailed art lesson plans, drawing lessons, printables, sketchbook starters (and more) provided monthly, you will LOVE The KinderArt Club - a membership portal designed for parents, homeschoolers, classroom art teachers and studio instructors.

Inside the club you will find hundreds of printable PDF art lessons designed to work in small or large group settings, with a range of ages (from 5 to 12 years).

Get creative teaching kids at home, instructing students in a classroom, leading workshops in a studio, or sharing online, as you explore artists, art periods, science, nature, history, cultures and themes, with creativity and flexibility in mind.

Join us today at: TheKinderArtClub.com



Sign up for our Newsletter