Here I Am!

My poor, little, lonely blog has been missing me! I guess I got lost in all of the May activitites and had a Graduate May-mini session which was basically a crash course crammed into 3 weeks! However, tonight was my last class for 2 weeks and then just 2 more summer classes and I'll have that degree and more importantly...the pay raise!

Many people do ocean units in the month of May so here is a quick idea that you may or may not already do. I love Eric Carle's books and use them all throughout the school year. When we do our ocean unit, I love to read Mister Seahorse and we learn all about seahorses.

We also talk about Eric Carle's art work and then visit his website where he shows exactly how he creates the pictures in his books.  Visit his website here! We then make our own seahorses in a similar fashion.  I am so sorry I do not have a seahorse pattern to share with you...I believe mine came from a Carson Dellosa book. 

Each child gets a page with 2 seahorses on it. They lay small squares of different colors of tissue paper on the seahorse, overlapping the pieces until no white shows on the seahorse.  Next we spray the tissue paper with a water botttle and lay it aside to dry.The tricky part is finding the cheap kind of tissue paper that will "bleed"! The dollar store is a great place to find it.  PLEASE test your tissue paper before starting this project just in case it does not work!   

When the tissue paper is mostly dry (usually a couple of hours), the kids peel the tissue papers off and throw them in the trash. The tissue papers "bleed" onto the seahorse and it leaves behind beautiful "stains" that blend together and look very similar to Eric Carle's art work. Once they are cut out they are simply beautiful!

I have also used washable markers to color the seahorse different colors and spray with water. After they are dry, the results are very similar. We cut these out and they make a wonderful bulletin board! So sorry I don't have more pictures to go with this project or a picture of the finished bulletin board. We actually did an ocean unit early in the school year and I didn't think to take more pictures.

Well it is time to wrap up this school year and finally find time to breath! Now I am off to find a condo for our beach trip coming up in 2 weeks! I am so ready to get my toes in the sand and my nose in a good book!