Sharks. Such a fascinating creature that Discovery Channel devotes an entire week to them with Shark Week, and kids everywhere are obsessed. My kids haven’t jumped on the shark bandwagon yet, so I decided that Shark Week was the perfect opportunity to start learning! I started with an idea for a fun shark craft project with a moveable chomper mouth, and my kids insisted we needed some fish for him to gobble up too! I can’t wait to show you the perfect book on sharks, my kids are now officially obsessed!
What You Need for Your Shark Craft
- Paper plates
- Grey paint, or any color you want!
- Paint brushes
- Googly eyes
- Glue sticks
- White construction paper
- Paper fasteners
- Scissors
- My free counting fish printable!
Let’s Have some FUN!
I started out with a little prep work for our shark craft. Using scissors, I cut paper plates in half for the top and bottom half of our shark. I also cut 2 larger size triangles for a dorsal fin and tail and a smaller one for the side fin. I cut strips of teeth to line his mouth with white construction paper. Since our paint kit didn’t have any grey, I mixed some black and white to blend together. This gave us a great chance to talk about how colors blend together to make new ones!
Next up was painting! We love doing our craft projects at the kitchen island in our learning tower because it keep my crazy kids contained! We painted the paper plates for our shark craft with the grey paint, and then the kids mixed in a little green and blue too. Once they were well covered, we let them sit to dry and read our shark books!
After the paint was dry, we placed a googly eye on our shark! I love the self-sticking version because its not as messy as dealing with glue! I helped guide glue placement and we attached the pre-cut teeth strips to one side of the paper plate that would soon be our shark mouth. Then, we used our glue sticks to attach the dorsal fin, tail fin and side fin to our shark! The finishing touch is allowing a grown up to use a paper fastener to attach the 2 paper plate parts together (similar to our fun moveable owl wings!). This creates a fun moveable mouth for your shark to scoop up the fish!
Don’t forget to grab your free counting fish printable here for your shark craft here! You can have a little fun with your shark gobbling up colors, numbers, or creating pairs. You could even work on addition and subtraction for simple math problems!
Let’s Read our Shark Book!
I never imagined I would be reading non-fiction books for bedtime stories. Then my son found a set of these beginner reader non-fiction books, and he’s obsessed! We read books about tornadoes, the human body, storms, the solar system, and now we’ve added sharks to the collection!
I love these books for a few reasons. First, they are super affordable at only $5 each! These make them easy to stock up on a variety of non-fiction topics, to create an awesome home reference collection. My mom is a teacher, and these have quickly become a staple in her classroom. They are packed with incredible photos and have small chunks of information, making it easier for preschoolers and early elementary aged kids to follow.
We learned so much about sharks and their environments in this Shark book! From where they live, what they eat, and how many different kinds of sharks there are! I couldn’t believe there were so many things I didn’t know until reading this book along side them! It was awesome to learn all about them while our shark craft was drying.
Here are a few things we learned:
- When a shark tooth breaks or gets blunt, a tooth from behind replaces it!
- Tasselled wobbegong sharks have pattered skin to help them blend in with rocks on the sea floor
- Greenland sharks live in the icy cold water near the north pole
- A great white shark can go without food for 2 months after it has eaten a big meal
I hope you are having fun enjoying shark week! Pairing books and crafts together to help learn new things can really make learning fun! Want to check out all the amazing other beginner reader books? You can request a catalog to see them all or peek on my website! You’ll want to check out our Shark Sensory bin we made too… coming soon! Happy reading!
[…] so that his wings would rotate and move! A few months after creating this project, we make moveable sharks too, make sure to check it […]