Painting tips for coral reef

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Dive into a Coral Reef

1. You will need a long piece of paper, water-based paints, and some (paper) straws.
2. Mix your paint with plenty of water.
3. Place a splodge of paint where you would like your coral to begin.
4. Now use the straws to blow the watery paint all over! It should form arms and branches. Race each other to the top edge. Grow your corals and reef until it is full and colourful.

Top tip: Once it is dry, you can use your reef in the collage activity below, or even as a background to an animation:

1. Collect up shells from previous visits to the beach, stones, empty snail shells, or leaves from your outside space.
2. Choose a background. We have used parcel paper, but you can use any colour or type of background you like.
3. Create your creature!
4. Take a photograph of your creature to remember your design.

Now that you have documented your design with a photograph; you can return your materials or create another.

You can share your collage creations with us. Ask a grown-up to help you to tag us in your picture on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Build a turtle

Use this activity sheet to build your own 3-dimensional turtle. Colour the shell in to look just like one of the world’s species of reef turtles.

Share any of your Crafty Creatures creations with us to feature in our community gallery. Kit, aged 5, would like to share his with you:

Ask a grown-up to help you to tag us in your picture on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Find out more about how climate change is impacting coral reef habitats around the world here (with Primary school curriculum links).

White Coral Reef

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Crystal Sea 6151-21

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Subterranean Stream 6151-31

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Drakkar 6171-31

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Vanilla Pod 6188-63

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Highway 6204-63

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Volcanic Ashes 6208-42

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Volcanic Rocks 6208-83

SICO one coat colours available in SICO Prestige and SICO Super Premium Exterior.

Coral Reef Water Colour Art Project for Kids

Hi, I’m Terri at Creative Family Fun and I’m excited to be here at Rainy Day Mum! We live in the middle of the United States, so we don’t often get to see the ocean. We do a lot of virtual traveling, where we use books and activities to explore the world. This time, we went on a fun coral reef exploration and created this fantastic Water Colour Art Project based on the Ocean Theme.

We have included affiliate links to some of the products and resources as an associate we may earn from qualifying purchases.

What You’ll Find on This Page Toggle

Coral Reef Art for Kids to Make

The book we used was One Small Square: Coral Reef by Donald Silver. One Small Square dives the details of a coral reef. We learned about the animals and plant life in a coral reef. We also learned about how they are formed and why it is so important to save coral reefs. This is a wonderful book but it is aimed at kids 5 and up. If you’re working with younger kids, Life in a Coral Reef by Wendy Pfeffer is a great choice for preschoolers, and toddlers would love Over in the Ocean: In a Coral Reef by Marianne Berkes.

After reading all about coral reefs, we got out some of our art supplies to make our own watercolor and salt coral reefs. The salt added a fun texture to our projects.

Supplies Needed for watercolor coral reef

We used our watercolors, white paper, and salt to make our plants and animals for our coral reef. We started by painting designs on our white paper. We painted stripes, blobs, and curvy bits. There is no need to get into too many details at this point. While the paint was still wet, we sprinkled salt over it. When the paint dries, the salt will add a fun texture to your painting.

Once the painting were dry, we shook off the excess salt. We were left with a cool texture that was perfect for our coral reefs. We then used our scissors to cut our paintings into some of the shapes we saw in our books. We had large fan shapes, smaller blobs, tree-like shapes, and more. We even cut a few fish shapes. Once they were all cut out, we arranged them on our blue paper and glued them down. We were left with a perfect coral reef, that was as individual as any found in our oceans. And, along the way, we learned about the importance of the coral reef and the creatures living in them.

I hope you enjoyed our virtual trip to the coral reef!