Swimmy

Swimmy is one of my favorite read aloud books for children. It is a wonderful Leo Lionni book that is full of the author's unique artwork. The story is about a black fish named Swimmy who looses all of his red brothers and sister fish to a fierce and strong tuna fish. He is lonely and sad but discovers other marvels in the sea like a jelly fish, eel and mysterious fish pulled along by an invisible thread. Eventually Swimmy discovers some more fish, just like his family he lost and comes up with a plan to help them not be afraid of getting eaten up. He tells them we have to THINK of something. Swimmy teaches them to all swim together and form a big fish. Once they have done this, since he is black, he becomes the eye. Now they are free to go out and play and they run off all of the big fish. A story of loss, friendship, different emotions, and many deeper elements to pull out along the way.

Last year I had each child do a hand print in red ink and form a giant fish, then I programmed black fish with each child's name on one to get to be the "eye" of the fish each day. I haven't done that this year, but it was a cute idea that I might do again one year.

This year, I decided to work on making a painting that looked like some of the artwork in Leo's book. I used drops of blue and green Biocolor paint and had the children mix it with shaving cream on the table. I pressed a white sheet of paper down and then used a plastic scraper to run across the paper to take off excess shaving cream. The color was left that sorta looks like watercolor. The children thought it looked exactly like the book.