salt dough fish

Beans +  spray paint + buttons + salt dough & shiny paper = FISH!!! Let me explain...

For my lessons with Arts Outreach this session, I have a horde of 1st graders that are currently studying the ocean.

The teacher requested a mosaic oriented project... for the collage class...so the result was these salt dough mosaic fish! Which are super easy to make! (I think I may have had more fun making them than the kiddos...)

First off, I spray painted a bunch of beans in silver and gold paint...which left some really fun patterns on the paper...

Next up! Salt dough! This is such a versatile project, and so easy to make. I've been using this recipe which is just 2 cups flour + 1 cup salt + 1 cup water. It starts out really messy but slowly clumps into a nice play-doughyish ball.

Take a small chunk of the dough and roll it into a ball, then place it on top of a piece of wax paper on a paper plate.

For making it flat, I've found the easiest way with a bunch if kiddos is to squish it flat with a second sheet of wax paper on top, followed by another paper plate to squish down. Consider is a paper plate/wax paper/salt dough sandwich...

You can then cut it into a different shape or just leave it round...

Now the fun part! Squish in the shiny beans, buttons, sequins, whathaveyou! Just don't squish it all the way through to the other side. For fins, we folded up shiny paper and secured it into the fish with another tiny piece of salt dough.

Also really important with the kiddos is to make sure they don't remove the fish from the wax paper until it's FULLY dry! It will make it brittle and likely break it...

So there you have it, salt dough + spray painted beans = fish! Super easy and fun!