Dr. Seuss One Fish Two Fish Art

I came across THIS POST via Pinterest for Dr. Seuss week. I thought it was cute, but the teacher-added facial features and words made it TOO teacher-aided for me.  I really don't like to see my hand on any of their arts and crafts if at all possible. Also, plopping down a hand in paint and onto paper isn't much of a learning experience.

So, I changed it up a little.

We still did a red fish handprint, but the children, even the younger ones, painted their own hand. They decided which hand they painted. Following directions, the red fish had to be placed on the left side of the paper, half way down. The children had to show me where that was before putting their hands down. The little ones I pointed to the area after asking them and letting them think on it.

And we did a blue fish.

Rather than me drawing on the facial features, we used finger prints for the eyes. The children chose which finger to use, colored it themselves, and placed it.

Then I gave them word strips that they colored, trying to stay in the lines.

Click on image for link to print.

For older children I would have had them cut the strips out themselves, but these children are not scissor proficient yet, and time wise we just couldn't do teacher-assisted today.

ONE FISH and TWO FISH they got to color with any colors they chose. RED FISH and BLUE FISH they had to choose an appropriate color to use.

Then they glued on their strips. Independently. The one year olds got a little circling of the finger by me to show general placement area. If they put the words on upside down, I removed the strip and asked the child to do it again.

 I would have liked to do the fishbowl cut out like in the original idea post, but I wasn't sure how big they would turn out and how much room we would need for the words, which needed to be large enough to color.

I think they turned out great.

 This was done by a 3 1/2 year old.

 This was done by a 22 month old.

SKILLS:
Following directions, the number one component of this, especially as most of our arts and crafts are open ended/free expression rather than this more structured activity
Color recognition
Language/Literacy spelling and vocabulary, sight words one/two/red/blue
Fine motor, lots with the painting of the hands and coloring, careful placement so as not to smear, paste skills and cutting if they were older
Math numbers, number words, logic/reasoning
Creative expression, not much but they did have some choices and decisions to make
Sensory with the paint on the hands and marker on the fingers, along with the glue that got on the hands as well.
Tags: art, craft, preschool, homeschool, pre-k, prek, childcare, daycare, Dr. Seuss, handprint, colors, coloring, paint, painting, printable