First Grade "Fish Eyes" Collages

I started talking with first grade about the different types of jobs artists have.  For this project we talked about the job of an illustrator and I introduced the book Fish Eyes by Lois Ehlert.  We started off our collages by cutting out the shape of a fish and with each class I approached it a little differently.  I had some classes draw a large fish on a rectangle, others folded their rectangle in half and drew half of a fish, and a few cut off the corners to get an oval shape.  We worked on adding fins and read through Ehlert's book to get some ideas for details.  The last day of the project we talked about habitats and I showed the kids how to draw a few types of things found in the ocean.  I really liked how the kids took their own spin on adding details in the fish habitat; one kid even went as far as to make a submarine to put in the background :)