Sharks, Aquariums and Thanks to "A Day in First Grade"

With two teaching days left before our summer holidays begin, we've been doing lots of fun ocean stuff.   I got both these ideas off pinterest (where else?)

The first is a shark (yes, I have to tell you, just in case you can't tell).

This was super easy to make and the kids LOVED it. What's with boys and sharks anyhow? (I have a class of 19 and 12 of them are boys :).  I think it's pretty easy to figure out how we made this. As you can tell, I did NOT give them a shark template. All they got was an 11x14 piece of construction paper and I showed them on the board how to draw the shark. The HUGE mouth is a soft paper plate folded in half, then fringed for the teeth. They added a tongue, a small fish for the shark to eat (can you see the little purple guy?) and big googly eyes.

Then we made these gorgeous aquariums. We used stiffer paper plates for this project. The kids painted the inside of one plate and the outside of the other. Then we went out to play while the paint dried :)

I gave the kids some foam stickers from Michaels (fish, dolphin, starfish, coral, bubble and a wave).
They drew in some extra ocean life and also glued on a few sequins (for extra bubbles).  I cut out the top paper plate for them, but they did the gluing.

We actually didn't quite have time to finish, so tomorrow I'm giving them a small piece of peel-and-stick scrapbook paper. They're going to cut little fish from it to add to their ocean scene. That psychedelic fish is mine (and it's not very good ~ it needs fins and eyes and a mouth ~ but you get the idea :).

This was also very easy and I've already had several compliments from fellow teachers. This is definitely worth trying!  Oh! I almost forgot ~ some people like to add saran wrap between the plate layers so that there's more of a bowl effect.  But hey! School is almost over and I'm pooped!