Here is a STEM activity that uses the concept of the game ‘roll-a-colour’ to make a rainbow fish. Kids will add coloured scales to their fish in response to the roll of a dice. You can pair this activity with the children’s book ‘The Rainbow Fish’ by Marcus Pfister. This game provides a fun way to cover essential skills in mathematics, chance, and shape recognition. It is also a great process art activity to promote learning in these areas.
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Storybook STEM
This activity can be paired with the book ‘The Rainbow Fish’ by Marcus Pfister. This was actually the book that inspired this activity for us. ‘The Rainbow Fish’ is a lovely children’s picture book about giving to others. A fish decides to give away their shiny scales to the other fish and they are much happier afterwards.
What do I need for the game?
You will need the following items
- A dice
- Paper
- Texta/Marker
- Coloured paper (maximum required is 6). We used 5 different colours.
- Aluminium foil. We used this for our 6th colour.
- Glue
- Scissors
- You will need two of my FREE resources for this activity. These can be accessed using my free resource library. This library is exclusive to my subscribers. Sign up using the form below to gain access. You will need to download the following resources:
- Roll-a-colour playing chart
- My Rainbow Fish recording sheet
How do I play the game?
- Draw the outline of a fish on the paper using the texta. Make sure the body is nice and large as this will be used to add the scales.
- Cut up your paper into squares.
- Roll a dice.
- Match the corresponding result of the dice to the colour on the playing chart.
- Glue one square of that colour onto the body of the fish.
- Keep rolling the dice until all of the scales on the fish are complete.
- Use the recording sheet to evaluate the scales on your fish. These are prompts that determine all of the colours you have used, how many scales are on your fish and the most/least colours that you have used. Just count and answer the questions on the recording sheet. It is a great way to teach kids to evaluate and analyse their work.
**This game can be played individually or in groups.
Our results
We made some bright and colourful rainbow fish with this activity. We tried it a few times and used different sized pieces of paper too.
What to do with missing colours?
We really wanted our fish to look similar to those in the picture book ‘The Rainbow Fish’. So, we knew we needed scales which were shiny. We used aluminium foil for this and swapped one of the colours on the playing chart to silver. When a ‘6’ was rolled we wanted to glue this silver scale onto the body. So before we started, we wrote out a bit of code for this to show our swap.
What does this game teach?
This activity has a lot of different learning outcomes including:
- Number recognition
- Chance
- Colour recognition
- Dice usage
- Coding
- Process Art
- Evaluation and analysing
Conclusion
I hope you enjoy making your rainbow fish. Did you add lots of scales of different colours or were they similar? Would your fish look the same if you did it again?
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