In An Octopus's Garden

Do you ever wonder when and why you stopped drawing a smiley face on everything?

Ok, so this lesson connects to my K's curriculum study of underwater life and their visit to the local Aquarium. Terrific! But more importantly this octopus lesson allows me to introduce the kids to The Beatles! Little kids need to hear a Beatles song at least once, in my humble Beatle-loving opinion.

One of the reasons I love being an art teacher is it allows me to share the things that bring me joy and call it teaching.

This lesson is a quickie, a one day media circus with music, video and books. Oh and I can't forget the delightful crowd-pleasing water soluble oil pastels they use to create their Octopus's Garden! Dip and draw...dip and draw...

Before we start I read them this book:

a totally hilarious story about a giant squid, who's a little bit of a show-off and a doofus, in the most endearing way possible. The story shows a lot of very colorful cartoony underwater creatures and a cute little octopus is featured.

Then, so the kids know what a real octopus looks like, I created a short Powerpoint of different kinds of octopi. Then we made  a math connection; Octo=8 as in number of legs, and a science connection; octopus are mollusks, a kind of sea-creature.

Then we watch this video:

Which has the song and the real-life octopus! The internets are in love with octopi and I'm glad! There's another great little video here and here.

Now take an artistic underwater journey to an Octopus's Garden with me!

We did a lesson all about spirals in nature the other day, and we saw that the legs of the octopus were spiraled so most of the kids created very curly legs! 

You can tell that we talked about the suction cups on the octopus's legs, can't you?

                    I hereby nominate this day (in my mind) Octopi the Art Studio Day! Huzzah!