I was pleasantly surprised by how cute these turned out, especially when displayed in a window. This is a wonderful activity for a little sensory play with different textures for little fingers. As an added bonus, you could do all sorts of extension activities with this by diving deeper into each feature and creature in your “tank.” For example, while the kids are sticking on a particular item, I give a few fun facts or interesting characteristics of that item. Older kids could research ocean food webs, write a paper about a particular creature, or learn about different phototrophic levels in the ocean.

You could do this activity any way you would like, but here are the details for how we made our waterless fish tank with a group of about 10 preschool and elementary aged kids. It takes about 30-45 minutes from start to finish, but they’ve really enjoyed the end product and that each is unique depending on how they chose to place each item.

Before the activity prepare individual materials for each tank:

1. Shopping List:
   1. Coffee Filters
   2. Paper for cutouts
   3. Contact Paper
   4. Mini Cupcake Liners cut in half
   5. Yarn
   6. Toothpicks
2. Organize all your supplies for different fish tank creatures and features. I like to pre-package things into paper bags or snack baggies so that I know everyone got a set of everything they need. But you could hand things out as you go as well.
   • At least 2 coffee filters for colorful background water
   • Paper cutouts of fish, sharks, coral, etc. I used these SVG files and my Cricut to do all my cutting, but you could do “bubble cutting” with scissors by hand or have the kids cut things out themselves (this will definitely add a lot of time if you do it this way and little kids generally need a lot of help cutting).
   • Toothpicks cut in half for sea urchin spines
   • Half a small cupcake liner and about 5-8 yarn pieces 2-3 inches long each) for jelly fish body and tentacles
   • Strips of green construction/tissue paper (or they can hand tear it themselves) for kelp
   • Hole punch circles for bubbles or pebbles across the bottom (optional)
3. Cut contact paper (we did rectangles of about 12 inches by 10 inches)
4. Use masking tape or painter’s tape around the edge (or on the corners) of the contact paper, attach it to the table, sticky side up! Then recover with the contact paper backing until ready for the activity.

Ready for action!

1. Use “ocean” colored markers to make swirls and blobs onto two coffee filters. Then spray them with water to make the colors bleed into each other (don’t under- or overdo it!). Then hang the filters or lay in the sun to dry (I use clothes pins and hang them from my tree!).
2. Back at the table, add each creature one at a time to the contact paper. Make sure you put it down with the backside facing up if you have paper that has a different front and back. We do this as a group so that everyone is looking at and listening to facts about the same animal.
   • Fish – did you know that fish need oxygen just like we do? They don’t have lungs, instead they have gills that take the oxygen out of the water.
   • Sea Urchin – add a circle or smiley face and place the toothpicks all around it. Sea urchins can “walk” on their spines.
   • Shark – Sharks have many rows of teeth and they move forward when one gets lost! Sharks don’t have bones, they are made of cartilage!
   • Star Fish – Did you know that starfish eat by making their stomach come out of their body and into a mussel shell and they eat the mussel inside its own shell? Then it slurps it all back up like a shake! (Groans and awe inspired by this one!)
   • Coral – Is coral a plant or an animal? Yep – it’s a colony of tiny animals that make hard “shells”
   • Jelly Fish – Take the “semi-circle” cupcake liner, then add yarn tentacles underneath. One of the deadliest animals in the ocean is the box jellyfish!
   • Octopus – What does oct- mean? Some octopuses can change their body color and texture for camouflage.
   • Sea Horse – a sea horse is actually just a specially shaped fish! The males/boys carry the babies in a pouch in their tummy.
   • Add some hole punched bubbles or ground pebbles if desired!
   • Kelp – Place a few green strips behind your animals. Many animals eat the kelp and live inside to stay safe. Some kelp can be 100 feet tall!
   • Finally add the coffee filters as the background if they are dry. I sometimes cut or tear them into smaller pieces to cover as much of the background as I can.
3. At this point, all of the sticky parts of the contact paper should be covered up and you can take off the masking tape holding it to the table. Add a few more kelp strips  or blue paper if needed. I like mine to not be sticky at all so they can take it home without it attaching to hair or itself or anything weird!
4. Display your Waterless Fish Tank in a sunny window for the best view!