Koi Ponds

This lesson was one of the very first lessons I ever did in my pre-internship experiences. I really liked it and decided to try the lesson with 2nd grade.

The students were to make pond scenes, we discussed using warm and cool colors. They were to blend cool colors to create the water and then to create contrast we were to use warm colors on the koi fish.

I shared with the students some interesting facts about koi fish, for instance they can live for 30-40 years, and are symbols in Japanese culture for luck, love, friendship, and masculinity, as well as being known as the warrior fish and the fish of nobility.

Koi fish are usually a mix of orange, yellow, red, white, cream, and sometimes gold and blue. They can also have black spots on them. The students were really interested when I showed them a visual with all the different types of koi fish, they are categorized by color and scale pattern, the diagram included Japanese symbols for the type koi.

This project is really great because there are so many things you can talk about, we discussed what made the project 3-d because the torn strips bulge so the project is not flat. Finally we also discussed why the project is considered to be a mixed media project. I explained how this refers to what materials we use, in order to create the koi pond scenese we used paper, glue, crayons, watercolor paint, and tissue paper.