Oceans of fun with painted paper!

 Painted paper has OCEANS of applications!! This summer, right before we went back to school (the first week of August which is still summer!!) I taught this fun painted paper/collage lesson with our on-site extended day program (Tiger Club). I painted the ocean wall years ago, when I had all that free time before kids and marriage. It is kind of a landmark in our building, but it was designed to be an interactive wall several versions of the curriculum ago and we created sea creatures and added them every year when 1st grade studied the ocean. I decided to revive a new version for some summer art fun!

SO...after I wrapped up a week at the Tennessee Arts Academy, I was so fired up about painted paper I couldn't wait to try it out. Here is a picture of Laura Lohmann in action at TAA!!

My "Tiger Club" kiddos are always willing to be my lab rats so I headed over there to test the waters! Here is what we did...
First we painted two papers each, some did more until the paint was gone. No water just mats to clean the brushes on...it was awesome!!

 

Aren't they awesome!!

 

The next day, we created our amazing fish! Cutting and gluing and sharing all the beautiful papers. No one even freaked out about not having THEIR paper.  Once they finished I had made "water" with craft paper. The dow rods I had fit perfectly into the plastic ceiling hooks so I made a pocket of folded paper at the top of the craft paper with the rod through it. The kiddos brought their finished fish straight to the paper for display. Once they were all finished and layer out on the papers I taped them in place and snapped the rods into the ceiling hooks in about five minutes! They looked pretty awesome!