Activity Package

Welcome to the Kids' Fish Art Contest Activity Package.  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.

Six of the activities are appropriate for all ages, while one is best done by Junior or Intermediate students. These two activities involve students in major management issues related to each fish. The activity sequence is described briefly below. 

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.

Activity 4, Chutes and Ladders

Students will find that design challenges abound as they try to get Atlantic salmon and walleye around dams during their spawning migration without letting sea lamprey through as well.  All grades.

Activity 5, Cat-fish-a-licious

Students become catfish, anglers and predators in an active tag game where they learn some of the challenges catfish face as they try to live and reproduce.  Junior/intermediate.
 

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.  All grades.

Links to the Ontario Curriculum are provided in the Appendix.