Coffee Filter Stingray

For our Ocean theme last week, I taught the kids about stingrays. This was new to me. I've never taught about stingrays before so I was very excited to learn all about this gentle sea creature. For art, I folded coffee filters in half and the kids used dot markers to decorate them. The only reason I folded them in half is because I thought it would be cool if they had a symmetrical design, but it's not necessary to the craft.

(We put paper under the filters to catch some of the ink so cleaning the table would be a little easier.)
While it was still folded, we sprayed the filter with water. When it was dry, I made a template of half of a stingray and traced it onto the folded filter. I didn't get a picture of it on a colored filter, but here it is on a plain white one so you can see what I mean:

I kept the crease in it when I opened it up (I thought it looked better that way) and used one of the pieces I cut off as the tail.

The kids glued that piece on the end and added wiggle eyes to the top.

I love love love how they turned out! So simple and so beautiful.

Even if you don't fold the filter before decorating it with dot markers, as one child did, it still looks cool.

Fun Fact: Stingrays only use their tail, which has a venomous barb, in self-defense. Otherwise, they are very gentle animals.