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Lesson Plan Image

Mobile Sea Life

Marine life will appear to swim as students create mobiles that feature sea creatures.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper
  • Recycled Cardboard Tube
  • String
  • Tape

Steps

  • Step 1

    The ocean is home to many types of sea life including fish, reptiles, crustaceans, mammals, plants, and others. Have students form teams that will come up with several animals or plants they'd like to explore and and then create a mobile that features them. Examples might include whales, sea turtles, crabs, coral, jellyfish, dolphins, manta rays, or anything else. Ask them to look at images and find some facts about the marine life they've chosen. Encourage them to find information about their habitat, the ocean layer they live in, what they eat, who their predators are, etc.

  • Step 2

    Students will decide which team member will create the image of each selected form of marine life. They will draw the creatures or plants on heavy paper, cut them out, and add embellishments or details. Have each student write a fact about the creature or plant on the back of the image. The team will cut various lengths of string or yarn so the overall mobile has different lengths (which could be based on which level of the sea the life form lives in). They will tape a piece of string to each cut-out image and tie the other end of the string around a recycled cardboard tube.

  • Step 3

    Each team will present their mobile as it is hung to create a class aquarium-like display. Students can see marine life "swimming" around them and learn some interesting facts as they read the mobile notes.

Standards

SCI: Design pictorial or graphic representations/models that are useful in communicating ideas.

SCI: Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive.

Adaptations

Have students watch a short educational Deep-Sea Dialogue video about ocean life and exploration at oceanexplorer.noaa.gov, such as Ocean Technology (about using submersibles to observe and study the ocean environment),Deep-Sea Corals (about the beauty of these fragile ecosystems), or Predators (about how predators of all shapes and sizes catch their food).

Have students explore the work of some artists who created kinetic sculptures, such as "Double Gong" by Alexander Calder, "Obstruction (Coat Hangers)" by Man Ray, or "Landscape Mobile" by Roy Lichtenstein.