Reading, Recycling, and Rainbows = Frugal Fun for Little Ones!

To help instill the love of learning in my daughter, I try to add arts and crafts to our reading and math time.  Here is a fun little craft that I did with her after reading The Rainbow Fish.  (I originally saw the idea in Family Fun.) It uses old or damaged CD’s/DVD’s, so it is an opportunity to discuss recycling as well.  She loved it, and has wanted to read the book over and over and over…

Supplies:

• Adhesive gemstones
• Cardboard or foam (I used foam I found on clearance at Target.)
• Some sort of adhesive (I used leftover dimensionals that I had from a previous project.)
• Googly eyes (You can draw eyes with a Sharpie if you don’t have them on hand.)
• Unusable CD or DVD
• Scissors

Directions:

1. Read The Rainbow Fish.
2. On cardboard or foam, draw and cut out top, bottom, and back fins, as well as big fish lips, in various colors.
3. Using adhesive of your choice, adhere fins and lips to the non-shiny side of the CD/DVD, so that the shiny side does not show the adhesive.
4. Adhere the googly eye.  I used black puffy paint to adhere the eye.  It created a black ring around the eye, which I thought looked cute.
5. Adhere gemstones ALL over the fish!

Additional Ideas:
*If you wanted, you could use all red and green and turn this into a Christmas ornament to display on the tree.
*If you need to purchase supplies, look for a Michael’s coupon in your Sunday paper.