This week’s Smock Rock students at TLB Music are creating Beatles-inspired “Octopus’s Garden” collages complete with yellow submarines! This project is amazing for practicing fine motor skills: it includes cutting, pasting, pressing, drawing, bending, threading and manipulating small pieces.  As children craft, they’re listening to some of our favorite Beatles’ songs like “Octoptus’s Garden”, “Yellow Submarine”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “Good Day Sunshine”, and “Hello, Goodbye”!

Student Materials:
ocean scene printed on sturdy sheet of white paper (PDF below)
printed octopus template on sturdy purple paper (PDF below)
2” circles: 1 red (for crab) & a few more in a variety of other colors to create fish
small white 1/2” circles for eyes
2 small red crab claws (precut by teacher)
small paper hearts for fish tails
small paper shells (precut by teacher)
1 paper yellow submarine (precut by teacher, image below)
small tissue paper pieces to create coral
crayons, glue stick, scissors

Teacher Materials: scissors, circle hole punchers

Teacher Prep: -print ocean backgrounds, octopus templates, and yellow submarines
-precut crab claws, shells, heart tails -cut octopus templates out, leaving legs for students to cut
-hole punch 2 inch circles and small circles for eyes (add black dot on eyes for pupils!)

Project Intro:
This art project is inspired by The Beatles! The Beatles were a very popular band! Has anyone heard of them? Show pictures. What are their names? What instruments do they play? Today, we’re going to create an Octopus’s Garden in honor of their song “Octopus’s Garden”. What other sea animals do your students know? Other songs we’ll listen to today: “Yellow Submarine”, “Here Comes the Sun”, “Good Day Sunshine”, and “Hello, Goodbye”. To begin, give each student an ocean background. What do they see? (ocean floor, sand, water, seaweed, coral)

Pass out an octopus template for each student. Ask students, how many legs does an octopus have? Count together using sample!
Step 1 (create octopus): Cut along the dotted lines to create the legs then, in the center of your template, paste 2 eyes and draw a smile with crayon. Wrap the template up, attaching at the tab with glue, to create the octopus body. Hold in place for a minute until it is secure then curl the legs up! With the help of an adult, hole punch 2 small holes on each side of your octopus, thread a string through and tie above. Set aside.

Ask everyone to find a big red circle. We’re going to turn this into a crab! Can kids find 2 red crab claws and 2 white eyes?
Step 2 (create crab): With the help of an adult, cut your red circle in half. Glue in the center of your ocean floor with the rounded side on top. Next, let’s give our crab 2 eyes at the top of his head. Glue 2 white circles on your crab’s head. What is our crab missing? (Legs!) Using a red crayon, draw 8 crab legs from the crab’s body to the ocean floor. Draw 2 more front legs on the top of your crab and attach your red claws!

Next, let’s create fish using circles, triangles and hearts!
Step 3 (create fish): Round fish: cut triangle mouth out of circle & use triangle for tail.  Add eyes.
Fish with heart tails: cut the bottom of a circle off, following the curve of the circle, creating a slimmer fish. Add a heart tail and eyes. Ask kids to get creative and create a 3rd type of fish!

Another famous Beatles song is “Yellow Submarine”. Does anyone know what a submarine is? Let’s add a yellow submarine to our ocean!
Step 4 (yellow submarine): glue a yellow submarine in your ocean.

Look at picture of coral. Coral lives on our ocean floor! Let’s create coral with tissue paper.
Step 5 (coral): Crumple up small pieces of tissue paper to make different colored coral and glue to ocean floor.

Our last step is adding details to our octopus’ garden. Shells, bubbles, more fish, etc!  Sit your octopus in the garden or make him dance, holding him by the string! 
Step 6 (ocean details): Add details to your ocean. Ideas:
*draw bubbles coming from mouth of fish
*glue shells to ocean floor
*use fish stamps to stamp extra fish in your water
*stick fish stickers to your background
*glue sequins to ocean floor
*glue rice “rocks” to ocean floor