Posted by Nicole Carney on Mar 16, 2014 in Picture Book Activities, Rainbow Activities, St. Patrick's Day | 0 comments

The boys had recently experimented with projecting rainbows using old DVD’s, so I thought it would be fun to recycle the old DVD’s into a rainbow craft. I started by introducing my bugs to Marcus Pfister’s picture book, The Rainbow Fish.

The Rainbow Fish is a story about a beautiful fish with lovely, rainbow coloured scales. The other fish were in awe of the Rainbow fish’s beauty and would often ask him to play with them. Unfortunately, the Rainbow Fish’s beauty had made him arrogant, and he believed his shimmering scales somehow made him better than the other fish, so he would just ignore the other fish and swim on by. One day a little fish asked the Rainbow Fish if he could have one of his lovely scales. The Rainbow Fish was aghast that the little fish would even think of asking such a ridiculous request, and told the little fish to go away. It didn’t take long for the other fish to hear about how mean the Rainbow Fish had treated the little fish and, consequently, they began to ignore the rainbow fish altogether. The Rainbow Fish was confused as to why the other fish weren’t paying attention to him any more, so he went to see the Octopus to see if he could help him. The Octopus advised the Rainbow Fish to give each of the other fish one of his glittering scales. He told the Rainbow Fish that he would no longer be the most beautiful fish in the ocean, but he would be happy. The Rainbow Fish didn’t like this idea, but when he encountered the little fish again, he decided to give him one of his scales. The little fish was SO happy, and seeing his happiness made the Rainbow Fish happy too. The Rainbow Fish started to share his scales with all of the other fish as well, until he was left with just one shimmering scale. He was no longer the most beautiful fish in the ocean, but he had found true happiness by giving to those around him.

This was an impromptu craft idea, so I didn’t have a copy of Pfister’s book, The Rainbow Fish, at home to read to my bugs; instead, I found this video of the story being read by the late great actor, Ernest Borgnine:

The boys really loved the story, and asked to watch it a few more times before we actually began our craft.

Making Rainbow Fish Suncatchers from Recycled DVDs or CDs

I got this idea from DLTK’s Crafts for Kids. I used their fish template to trace the tail, lips, and fins onto coloured foam paper for our rainbow fish. My bugs chose the colour they wanted for their fins and tail and I cut them out for them. I also gave each of them a large googly eye, a glue stick, and some sparkly, colourful sequins to stick on to create the rainbow fish’s beautiful scales.

The boys used the glue stick to glue on the foam lips, fins, and tail.