Kids Get Crafty: Fairy Fish Magic

This week we decided to have a go at recycled materials again… it was prompted by the fact that we received some “Fairy Liquid Washing Gel” and I thought that the bottle looked a bit like a fish… so I looked at the other Fairy bottles and thought… we can make our own recycled fish school here! We love fun Crafts for Kids.

The Book

Hooray for Fish!By Lucy Cousins.

We have been here before and we are here again.. First it was Red Ted’s “first” favourite read – I picked up a hardback copy at Tate Modern Bookshop. And now Pip Squeak adores it! A while back we did a hand and feet craft to go with it and today we make more fish!

Red Ted really enjoyed it the most 9 months – 12 months, though he does still enjoy it now, especially since I have brought it back out for Pip Squeak. We love all the different, bright and colour fish! Our favourite bit is probably the very rhythmic ”Eye Fish, Shy Fish, Sky fish, Fly Fish” page, but that is just us. It is all lovely! I now know all the words practically off by heart!

From a parental perspective, it is great, as it has lots counting going on, lots of colours to identify, stripes, spots etc etc so they are definitely learning too!

One of my (!) favourite Lucy Cousins books.

The Craft

As mentioned above, it all started with some plastic fabric conditioner bottles.

But I reckon you can make fish out of any bottle really – just grab a bottle – look at it and see where it takes you…

Materials for making your recycled fish

empty bottles,
acrylic paint (or poster paint with PVA glue),
brushes,
googly eyes (optional)

Blue fish

1) Peal off the labels, paint on eyes. Done. I really don’t think the photo does it justice, in some way I think it is the best fish of all:

Stripy Fish:

1) Peel off the labels & inspired by the “stripes on the bottle”, we made this one stripey… it helped Red Ted that we had two brushes… he did one colour and I did the other, “evening out” any “mistakes” he made… Another way, is to paint on a base colour first and let dry, then add the stripes – this would be easier for a young child to manage on their own.

Red & Green Fish

1) To be honest, I made this one evening.. as I wanted to finish this post… but that’s ok… crafts are with and for children! I looked at the shape of the bottle and let the lines guide where I put the red and the green: