My Aquarium

This lesson was so much more involved than I had anticipated.  When I first tried the lesson myself, I didnt realize from a childs perspective, the little speed bumps along the way.  I quickly found out when I tested it out on my first class!

I really wanted this to be a 1 hour lesson, but really it should have been divided into 2 classes.  The first step was to make the ruler lines on both sides and the bottom to represent a fish tank.  It caused so much confusion the first class, that I ended up making the lines myself for the other classes.  I wanted to teach them  how to appropriately read the ruler but to accomplish all of this in an hour class is impossible. 

Next, we painted the background with watercolors.  I asked the students to paint in blues and green. 

I then set up a table and called it my "Creation Station".  It was covered with a ton of different colored papers.  They had to first make their gravel or stones for the bottom of their fishtank.  After that, they went to work creating their fish tank.  They cut up the paper for the gravel and stones and then used green paper for their seaweed.  The next step was to create their fish and sea-life in the fish tank. 

Here are some results:

This one above is my example.  If  you notice, I didnt realize I had put my seaweed up against the glass.  It should have been
embedded in the stones.  See, even I make mistakes!!