Shark and turtle paper plate crafts

We are really trying to make headway with our Summer bucket list we wrote earlier this week. You can find it here, if you haven't seen it already. One of our most special days out was a trip t the local aquarium. We've never really had a local aquarium as such - the nearest used to be over an hour's drive away, which is pretty poor considering we live just five miles away from the coast. This summer however, we were delighted to discover a new aquarium was opening in Skegness, not far form where we live. As it wasn't a particularly great day weather-wise yesterday, coupled with the fact Skegness isn't especially busy yet, we decided to visit for the afternoon. I'll be writing a post about our trip there soon, so look out for it, particularly if you live nearby.

Anyway, our trip to the aquarium renewed Tommy's interest in sea creatures. He's always loved learning about them and when he was about two he loved nothing more than watching David Attenborough documentaries. He's DEFINITELY my child! Today was a particularly grim day, so we couldn't do much in the way of outdoor play so we decided to do some crafting instead. Using the ocean as our theme, I asked Tommy what creatures he'd like to try and create and eventually, after much deliberating, we decided on sharks, turtles, jellyfish and octopuses.

I was quite confident that we could make one of each in one afternoon but that was never going to happen, so we just got round to making the shark and turtle. To make the shark, we used paper plates, paint, card, glue and cellotape.

We started by painting the top half of the paper plate grey and then cut fins out and painted those before leaving them to dry. We then cut a semi-circle out of red card and glued it onto the white half of the paper plate. Google eyes were then added and we used white card to make the teeth.

To make the turtles, I cut squares of corrugated cardboard, tissue paper, foam, crepe paper and card and then we glued these on to the paper plate We cut out a head and fins and cellotaped them onto the back before adding google eyes and some glitter on the fins and head. 

Both crafts were super easy to make, requiring us only to use a few materials and super cute!!!