Activity Package - 2011

Welcome to the Kids' Fish Art Contest Activity Package for Fall 2011.  
 

The materials you will find here provide an active, involving way to create a learning unit around the contest, from an introduction to the value of fish to the final creation of contest artwork and the related essay.  Resource sheets and links provide all the information required, and the activities form a stepwise process from research to sketches to composition studies to final art.

Five of the activities are appropriate for all ages, while two are best done by Intermediate or Senior students. The activity sequence is described briefly below. 

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Activity 1 - Webs and Stacks
Word webs are used to illustrate the value of fish to the environment and to people, while the economic worth of sport fish is visualized using a stack of loonies.  Students must calculate how high that stack would be.  Along the way, students learn about the life and times of the lake trout during Ontario's recent past.  All grades; two reading levels.

Activity 2 - Know Your Fish!
Once the contest is introduced, students research their fish, using Web or other resources and/or point-form resource sheets included in the activity.  By the end, students will have most of the information needed for their essay, and a simple yet identifiable line drawing of their fish.  All grades.

Activity 3 - Fish & Habitat Balance Mobiles *
The focus here is on habitat.  Students create mobiles which demonstrate the balance of habitat components for each fish, and include the fish created in Activity 2.  The required essay can now be completed.  All grades; small group work. We welcome photos of your students' mobiles so we can create an online gallery. Send your photos to Jeff Standaert.

Activity 4 - Chutes and Ladders  

Students will find that design challenges abound as they try to get Atlantic salmon and American eel around dams during their spawning migration without letting sea lamprey through as well.  Intermediate/Senior.

Activity 5 - Globe-trotting Trout   

Is the brown trout's epic journey around the world a good thing or a bad thing? Students role-play different points of view and debate the issues surrounding the introduction of brown trout outside of its native range. Intermediate/Senior.
 

Activity 6 - Sketch Studies*
Students learn and apply field sketching techniques to the key characteristics of their fish and its habitat, as they go on a virtual field trip that brings them up close and personal with the fish of their choice.  All grades.

Activity 7 - Young Angler's Licence Artwork*
Students integrate art and design principles into a series of composition studies, and then into their final contest artwork. Please encourage students to exercise their own creative judgment and not to copy the work of others. All grades.

Links to the Ontario Curriculum

* Adapted with permission from the Junior Duck Stamp Conservation and Design Program, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Federal Duck Stamp Office.