Art in Science-the 3-D Experience

The grand finale in our ocean bulletin board wasn't actually put on the board, but suspended from ropes that I hung in front of the board. The effect was great. Here's what we did.

I gave each of the kids a homework assignment. Choose one ocean creature you would like to study and make a 3-D image of your animal. The requirement was that it must be at least 5 inches long. This is one of my favorite activities because of two reasons. The kids love it; therefore they learn from it. The second reason is that it shows excellent creativity on the part of my students. I am always amazed at what they bring in, whether it is simple or complex. Let me show you some of the amazing sea life that showed up in my classroom this year.

Note the squid, the octopus, shark, puffer fish, clown fish and angel fish. There is also an eel and a sea star.

Here you will see an orca whale, jellyfish, blue whale, manta ray, penguin,  and two sea turtles.  Some were cute; others were fantastic. Because my classroom is multi-grade, the complexity varied greatly, but everyone did a credible job.

They were able to use their creature as a prop as they shared information about their sea creature with the rest of the class; then we hung them up. I left them until after our first parent-teacher conference so the parents could enjoy all that the children had done. They loved it too!