Faux Water Craft
- Let kids enjoy the fun of making water craft projects that require no water and avoid a messy clean-up afterward. Begin this project by informing the children that you will be making an aquarium complete with fish and plant life. The Franklin Institute recommends taking two paper plates, cutting out their centers and then taping them together around the edges. Tear up green tissue paper in strips and glue it onto both plates, beneath the hole. Tell kids this is seaweed. Cut out pictures of fish and coral or shells from magazines and glue them onto the plates around the seaweed. Cover the center hole with blue plastic wrap, punch two holes in the top of the plates and weave through a piece of yarn for hanging.
- Razzle dazzle curious little minds and eyes by spending an hour making a craft that's shiny, simple and reminiscent of streaming water. Engage kids' imaginations by informing them that the "water" in this craft is silver because they have been transported to another place and time far away. Give the kids one sheet of dark blue construction paper and some silver metallic strands (usually found in party or craft stores). Ask them to draw pretend animals they believe would exist in their fantasy world all over the page. Next, glue the silver strands onto the bottom half for a river or ocean of silver and allow the strands to dry. Using a gold glitter pen, add stars to the nighttime sky.
- Engage young minds creatively and simultaneously enable them to practice team building skills and communication by dividing the class into groups of four for an art project. Hand out one piece of 17 by 20 inches white art paper to each group and instruct each group to draw one giant fish in the center of the paper. Next, instruct each child to individually draw and cut out three fish from various colors of construction paper. Decorate the giant collective fish as a group and decorate the small ones individually. After all participants have finished three fish, glue them all inside the shape of the large one. Add blue waves beneath the main fish and add a sun in a top corner, if desired.
- Educate kids about the perils of dirty water by making a simple, visually unappealing craft. Collect one plastic milk jug per child. Using a black marker, mark the outside of the container with lines, specifying particular amounts to the side of each. For example, mark a 1/4 cup line, a 1/3 cup line and so on up to a 1 or 2 cup line. Next, glue colored yarn over each gauge line. Share some water related facts or facts about polluted water with the children. Stop after every fact and use a blue marker to fill in a line to the first water amount. Keep reading until all water lines are colored in. Fill the jugs 1/4 full with dirt and ask the class to contemplate having to rely on dirty water for sustenance.
