Recycled Fish Hat Craft

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This craft was inspired by the Funky Fish from "My Picture Art Class" by Nellie Shepherd.  It was really just inspired because we did it totally different!

Supplies:

• Plastic 2 liter soda bottle
• scissors
• scrap piece of cardboard
• 1 inch hole punch
• magazines, old coloring pages or used (and clean) aluminum foil
• duct tape in any color
• Elmer's glue
• standard hole punch  
• yarn or ribbon

Cut a nice big hole in the side of your plastic bottle - big enough that it can sit on your head.  For Chiquita that meant a big oval that was almost the whole side of the bottle.  If they don't want to wear it you can leave your bottle intact.  Chiquita really loved the idea of a hat from the book.

Cut out a tail and dorsal fin from cardboard.  Attach them to the bottle with duct tape - go ahead and cover the pieces completely with duct tape in your chosen color.  The standard silver color is great for a fish!  I actually used the plastic that I cut out the bottle for this but since it's curved it was hard to work with and I wouldn't necessarily recommend that.

Use the big hole punch to make LOTS of scales.  I originally intended to just use old coloring pages but Chiquita wasn't really happy about mutilating her pictures so I added magazines.  The glossy paper from magazines was nice I thought.  Aluminum foil would be really nice but we didn't have any used around and I didn't want to use new.

Add a stripe of glue near the bottom of the bottle.  Have your kid add the scales.  Continue with another line of glue above that, encouraging them to overlap the scales a little over the previous row.  Add until you get to where the bottle starts to narrow.  Add little strips (to avoid wrinkles) of duct tape until the "head" is covered.  Color pupils on two white circles cut out with your hole punch and glue them on for eyes.

If you want punch two little holes on either side of the fish and add yarn or ribbon to tie in on your little one's head!