How to Make a Deep Sea Diorama
A diorama is a model that is used to depict a representation of a moment in time. Dioramas can be used to display many things, from the real to the imaginary, but they often work well as an educational tool. Creating a diorama can give children a hands-on lesson in the subject matter while maintaining a high-quality learning experience. An effective way to teach children about the deep sea environment is to recreate underwater scenes with dioramas.
Things You'll Need
- Shoe box
- Construction paper
- Photos of sea creatures
- Plasticine
- Scissors
- Glue
- Markers or colored pencils
- Thread
- Tape
- Seashells
- Sand
- Glitter
- Pebbles
Instructions
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Decide in what way you wish to display your underwater scene. Cut out pieces of blue, green and brown construction paper. Use glue to line the shoebox with the construction paper, placing brown on the bottom to represent the ocean floor and using blue on the sides of the box to represent water. Cut out wavy strips of green construction paper for seaweed.
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Use glue to paste various pebbles, seashells and sand to the brown construction paper inside the shoebox. Take a few cut-out seaweed strips and glue them at their bases to the ocean floor. Glue a few more seaweed strips to the sides of the box, where the ocean floor meets the water. Glue glitter to the blue construction paper to make the water sparkle.
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3
Roll out the plasticine and then examine a selection of sea creature images. Choose the types of sea creatures you wish to display in your diorama. Use the images as a reference to sculpt aquatic creatures with the plasticine. Find images of fish from magazines or draw pictures of fish on construction paper and cut them out.
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Attach pieces of string to your plasticine models and fish images with tape. Use more tape to attach the other ends of the string to the top of the shoebox to create the illusion of the aquatic life swimming in water. Complete the scene by cutting out pieces of coral and underwater plants from construction paper and gluing them to the outside of the box.
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Tips & Warnings
Create mythological or fantastical sea creatures for your underwater diorama.
Make a diorama with sea creatures from times when dinosaurs roamed the earth, or restrict the creatures in your diorama to rare and strange aquatic life.
Be sure to supervise children when using scissors.
References
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Photos.com/Getty Images
