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Printing With Real Fish!


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Just wanted to know if any of you adventurous people have done paint printing using real fish. I've seen the results of such an activity displayed in a nursery (years ago) and wanted to do it as part of our 'animal' topic. What I wondered was whether anyone had any tips. You know the sort of thing: 'you need plenty of paint' or 'use the paint sparingly' etc. Is there any particular sort of paint that works well (I was planning on using good old poster paints)?

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Hi Chocolate girl,

I asked one of my nursery mums who owns a fish shop if she would be willing to bring a fish in for us to do printing with. She arrived with a huge fish box full of dirrerent shapes and sizes of fish, male and female crab. Gambas ranging from 12 inch down to one inch. Frozen fish for us to watch defrost, blue plastic gloves information books and posters. What a fantastic time we had. The crabs were great for printing you need the paint to be quite thick, we added sand .Runny poster paint paint worked best for the fish. Paint mixed with PVA and printed on to cling film worked well, you could peel it off when dried.I showed them how to get the meat out of the crab and they all shelled the large prawns. The fish that we just defrosted we put in the water tray for the children to play with, one little boy spent all morning there touching the fish eyes. You can imagine the smell , all parents commented when the children were picked up, the printing pictures didnt last long on display, the smell of them was horrendous! :o

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I hope this works... :D

 

Fish

 

Hurrah! Have never done that before, so feeling very pleased with myself!!

 

Post 13 (from Peggy!) is worth having a look at, as there are photos attached!

Edited by Clare
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I can echo the comments about the smell!!!! My colleagues used to dread me doing that activity. If it's an 'ordinary' fish, like a mackerel, beware children poking if it hasn't been gutted - the result is fascinating for some but nauseating for others! And I've never tried it on fish that have been gutted.

 

Ooh, and I'd wipe it well before applying paint, because you really want it as dry as possible.

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Think part of the learning and fun is the children 'poking' the fish. One year we had a little boy who used the pencils meant for writing names on paper to spear all the eyes out of the fish. He also discovered if you open and close the fish's mouth its gills move too. (He also chased the Y6 teacher...male... with a fish)

We change our displays quite quickly so the smell doesnt build up or have time to linger but could imagine its not good on a nice hot summer day.

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Well done Clare :o

 

We are doing Rainbow fish this week so will have some more "Fishy Fun Pics" at the end of the week.

 

On a website, can't remember where, an activity idea was to paint the fish with paint mixed with PVA, then print onto clingfilm, let it dry and "peel" off the print. So will be trying that this week, and maybe put up on our windows if it works. It also said crabs are good to make prints from ( can't afford them though :( ).

 

We have a goldfish visiting for the week, the children have neamed her Annabel, have you ever smelt fish food YUK, one to add to our sensory table xD ( can't have all nice smells now can we, need something to enable comparisons to be made, don't we)

 

For little ones, multi coloured finger prints for scales, using flourescant paints on a fish template is quite effective. :D

 

have fun everyone.

 

Peggy

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