Friday, February 13, 2015

A Bloom of Jellyfish


The technical term for a group of jellyfish is a smack or a bloom. Considering how beautiful and ethereal these kindergarten mixed media works are, I'm going with bloom. I did this lesson a couple years ago here and decided to give it another go. We broke down our jellyfish into 3 parts: the bell or hood which starts out with a simple curved line. We looked at pictures of all different colored creatures and learned these colors hide what the jellyfish has eaten to protect themselves from prey. So the children could use whatever color chalk pastels they wanted. Next came the oral arms which grab the food and feed it to the mouth on the underside of the creature. These often look like ribbons. At this point we switched to oil pastel and drew long skinny tentacles (where the stinging cells exist) in a variety of colors.  My kinders did a great job of carefully painting around their chalk pastel creatures and painting right on top of their oil pastel tentacles. They could instantly see the difference between these two medias. They sprinkled salt on top for a bubbly effect. Once these were dry, glued strands of yarn were added for more tentacles.

1st grade work

8 comments:

  1. very cool, mary! kinders?! they kept the edges of the jellies so clean!

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  2. I just started a jellyfish lesson with kindergarteners today! I'm already thrilled with the work they are doing. If only I could find a fun jellyfish story to go with it.

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  3. These are very beautiful! I had no idea groups of jellies were called blooms or smacks. Cool!

    Barbara Leyne Designs

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  4. Thanks, Mary, you taught me things I never knew about jellyfish. I really like the dark, dark blue the kids used. It makes the salt treatment even more ethereal. The jellyfish display tank is always my favorite part of an aquarium when I visit!! I could watch them for hours!!!

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  5. Beautiful! I love the contrast of dark water and brighter jellies! Kuddos Kinders! :)

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  6. Thanks very much all! Christie, I found some of the facts fascinating when I did a little research to share with the kids. Jellyfish have been on the earth for over 650 million years, before dinosaurs. The largest jellyfish (Lion's Mane) is over 120 feet long and the smallest, the size of a pin head. I did have a few kids question as to why I was giving them black to mix in with their blue paint. I thought it would help their jellies "pop." Looking forward to seeing your students' jellyfish Abby!

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  7. Your JELLY FISH are amazing!!!!!!!!! I need to revisit this. Tried it was okay, but nothing like this.

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