Art and Story Activities after Reading Pirate Pearl by Phoebe Gilman

Using marine blue and large sheets of finger painting paper have students finger paint the ocean blue.  Build your bulletin board display by joining these together to create your ocean.  Use your black paper from paper roll to shape the body of your whale.  Attach to your ceiling so it appears that your whale is diving.  As your art lessons progress add creatures of the sea to this ocean.  I use twisted sheets of tissue paper in bright colors and sit on my ledge to create my coral.  Add a few shells etc. and you have an imaginary ocean to help you get through winter!

I find interesting paper in art supply books and have the students trace and cut out shapes of fish to add to our ocean.  We use pastels and water colors to gain a variety of fish.  It becomes a wonderful display.

Rainbow Fish Art

Here is an example of a rainbow fish, using glitter glue on the fins, watercolors and gluing colored tissue paper squares onto the middle of the fish.  Cut it out and mount on blue paper or add to your ocean.

Writing Ocean Adventures

Partners discuss the details of their adventure, then color and cut out pictographs.  I traced mine from a T shirt from Hawaii that showed a palm tree, a surfer, a sun, a shell and a fish.  It was a small border across the chest of a T shirt. I give them each a copy of my pictographs (I drew boxes around them to help them cut them out) and have them figure out their story. The students love adding their own pictographs, so don’t forget to give them some empty boxes.  They color them, cut them out.  They place them inside their construction paper book cover in order and then tell the story orally. Once they have confirmed the order, then they glue them down ready to present to class.  My kindergarten children love making these books and stand with pride at being an author as they present their “Ocean Adventure”.

The Cover