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You are here: Home / summer activities / Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft {Printable Template}

Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft {Printable Template}

June 3, 2019 by Sheryl Cooper

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This post might contain affiliate links. CLICK HERE for more information. Thanks for visiting!

Inside: Put together an easy and fun toddler fish craft that is mostly process art. Mold a paper tube into the shape of a scale and invite the children to use them with paint, stamping all over the paper!

This toddler art might look like a craft, but it’s really process art.

And you know I am all about process art, right?

Recently our preschoolers made colorful jellyfish. While those also involved process art (spraying the tentacles with watercolors), I knew we needed something simpler for our toddlers.

Toddlers love to stamp with paper tubes. Why? It’s the motion. It allows them to make big movements with their arms. This an important step in fine motor development. We’ve also stamped circles and blended colors using paper tubes.

Cutting the paper into fish shapes tied in with the ocean sensory bin that was also in our classroom that week. And the shells we were exploring on the light table.

I’ve added some other toddler ocean resources at the end of this post, too.

toddler fish craft

 

Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft

 

What we used:

  • Paper tubes (toilet paper tubes or paper towel tubes that have been cut in half)
  • Washable tempera paint
  • White paper cut into fish shapes (Feel free to use the template that is towards the bottom of this post.)

Getting started with this toddler fish craft:

I pressed the edges of the paper tube together so they sort of curved, to resemble fish scales. I then stapled them to keep the tube from popping open again. I placed them in shallow trays of paint and placed the paper shapes on the table.

Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft

When our toddlers arrive each morning, we immediately begin our free-choice centers time. (You can see our morning schedule here.) One of their first stops is the art table, so we make sure it’s ready to go.

Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft

Toddlers love art activities that don’t require much instruction. They like simple art.

By this time of the school year, they know to look for the paint or glue, the tool to apply it, and the paper. The less I need to tell them, the better. They just want to go at it.

Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft

We used big buttons for the eyes.

Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft

That’s it! Simple and fun, the way toddlers love art.

More ideas for your toddler ocean theme:

Sticky Fish from Toddler Approved

Handprint Octopus from I Heart Arts n Crafts

Ocean in a Bottle from Happy Hooligans

Paper Tube Octopus from My Bored Toddler

Easy and Fun Toddler Fish Craft


toddler fish craft

Looking for a fish template? Click on the link below for the pdf download.

free fish template printable

 

Here’s more ocean activities to try:

Color Sorting Fish Ocean Sensory Bin

Easy Ocean Discovery Bottle

Super Simple Toddler Ocean Sensory Bin

toddler art activities

Looking for more ocean and beach theme ideas?

Setting Up the Beach Theme in the Toddler and Preschool Classroom

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Filed Under: Art, summer activities, Toddlers Tagged With: art, ocean, printable, summer, toddlers

About Sheryl Cooper

Sheryl Cooper is the founder of Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds, a website full of activities for toddlers and preschoolers. She has been teaching this age group for over 20 years and loves to share her passion with teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone with young children in their lives.

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Welcome! I'm Sheryl Cooper, teacher of 2 and 3 year olds for over 19 years. Read more about me here!

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