Tide Pools & Fish Schools

What is a Tide Pool?  It's sort of like a sea puddle that's left behind when the tide recedes from high to low tide; and this little pool might have all sorts of sea life living in it! 



We made these tide pools using crayons and thinned blue watercolor for a resist effect. Then we brushed white glue around the outside of our pools and sprinkled it with sand. After it dried we shook off the excess sand and hot glued on a few little sea shells.

We also made watercolor batik paintings of beautiful fish!


We used a variety of fish templates for this project because in a school of fish, all of the fish would look alike. The artists also chose a fish to be an "oddball" or an outsider to hide within the school of fish, and they drew it first. 


They added the rest of the fish by tracing another fish template over and over again. The trick here was to determine how to overlap the fish. Some are in front of, and some are behind the other fish. 



Next, we painted over all of our pencil lines with masking fluid. This keeps the paint off of the paper, even if you paint right on top of it. It also helps keep colors separated from one another and it makes great bubbles!

We painted our fish and the watery background. Then, after the paint was dry, we rubbed off the masking fluid, and erased any remaining pencil lines. Beautiful!

This art still has pencil lines to be erased. It pays to draw lightly!