Spool-Stamped Toddler Ocean Fish Art

Inside: Put together toddler ocean fish art that gives them a chance to do lots of stamping with paint – because that’s what they love to do! Find some empty thread spools and invite your young children to dip them into paint and stamp, stamp, stamp on fish-shaped paper.

Teachers, we really are a resourceful group.

I mean, seriously, we can find anything and make use for it.

Perhaps that’s why we have stashes of odd stuff we could have tossed, but just know there will be a use for it. After all, teachers love to create recycled crafts!

Ahem.

Yes, I am guilty.

Many, many years ago someone (perhaps a retired quilter), dropped off a huge bag of empty sewing spools. I’m talking spools of all sizes, even different colors. I had no idea there was such a variety.

During those years, we’ve used them as loose parts in our block area, we’ve put them in our water bins, we’ve sorted and counted them, and we’ve used them with paint.

The latter is exactly what we did with this toddler fish activity.

Toddler Fish Art that Involves Lots of Stamping with Paint

What we used:

Empty sewing spools

Tempera paint in different colors

Fish template (scroll down and you will find a link to download it for your toddlers)

Bright buttons

Construction paper in different colors

Setting it up:

Using the provided template (scroll down to find it), cut fish shapes from different colors of construction paper.

Pour a bit of paint into shallow containers and add the spools. I actually used 2 different colors in some of the containers as a fun color mixing experience.

The activity:

Ask your children what color fish they want from the collection you have cut out.

Give them a container of paint with the spool.

Invite them to remove the spool from the paint and stamp it onto the fish-shaped paper.