Kid Crafts,  Summer Activities

Handprint Fish | Counting + Color Matching Craft

The kids have officially been on summer break for over 3 weeks now. Since we’ve had our fair share of lazy summer days, I decided it was time to start our “preschool at home” lessons. Each week I am choosing a different theme. We started things off with an ocean theme last week, which I thought was the perfect way to kick off the summer!

Our plan may evolve as the summer goes on, but here’s a quick look at what I’m doing with the kids. Every morning we are setting aside 45-60 minutes for our school time. I usually start things off with a book related to our theme of the week. Next, I have the kids do a worksheet or two. My 2 year old, London, is still a bit too young for typical preschool worksheets, so I usually offer her some paper + crayons or have her work on a “do-a-dot” worksheet. She’s obsessed with the dot markers, so this usually keeps her occupied while her big brother finishes up his worksheets. Lastly, we finish things off with a craft that relates to our theme.

Since my 4 year old is obsessed with Fruit Loops, I thought it would be fun to incorporate them into a color matching activity + ocean themed craft. So, I came up with this fun handprint fish craft. I don’t buy them very often, but when I do he is the happiest kid ever.

Here is what you’ll need to complete this craft:

Bubble Art Supplies

Cardstock

Liquid dish soap

Blue food coloring

Straw

Craft Supplies Needed

Cardstock

Finger paint + paint brushes

Elmer’s School Glue (I don’t recommend using a glue stick for this project)

Googly eyes

Fruit Loops

We started our craft by getting creative with some bubble art! My sweet friend and fellow mama blogger, Lu, from The Mama Workshop inspired me to give bubble art a try. If you aren’t familiar with bubble art, here is a quick & easy tutorial. I thought the bubble art we created would make a great ocean for our fish to swim in!

Since we were already outside creating our bubble art (and trust me, you’re going to want to do that outside), I decided to set up our craft station out on our patio. The kids had been fighting like crazy that day, and the fresh air did everybody good!

The kids each picked 3 colors for their handprint fish. We finished off the fish with googly eyes and little smiles drawn with a Sharpie.

Once everything was dry, we used Fruit Loops to make the scales on our fish (I went ahead and cut them in half prior to starting our project). This made for a great color matching activity.

I also incorporated a little counting practice by asking them to count out 5 scales for each fish. I had the kids glue down their “fish scales” and then had them count out 3 blue Fruit Loops for each fish (to be used as bubbles).

Afterwards we had a bunch of Fruit Loops left over, so I decided to set up a simple color matching activity. I used our rainbow silicone cupcake liners as sorters, poured a bunch of cereal on the table, and let them go at it! Easy peasy and the kids loved it (we didn’t have a purple liner so we improvised and used pink instead)!

We capped off our ocean themed lesson with one of our favorite Disney flicks, Finding Dory!

Are you doing any preschool at home activities this summer? If so, I’d love to hear what you are doing!

xo,

Sumer

Handprint Fish Counting + Color Matching Craft

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