Fish Tessellation Art

Make fish tessellation art with kids!

If you’ve followed this site for very long, you know that we love tessellations.

A tessellation is a shape that can be repeated over and over in a pattern, like tiles on your floor. Every tile is the same size and shape, and there are no spaces or gaps between the pieces.

We’ve done tessellating flowers, leaves, and even Christmas trees, and we decided to make some tessellating fish! I LOVE how they turned out, and this is a great craft to do with a group of kids.

Today we’re going to show you how to make your own tessellating fish shape by starting with an index card, but then I also have a printable fish template if you’d rather use that.

Supplies Needed for Fish Tessellation Art:

Index cards
Scissors
Pencil
Sharpie marker or something similar
Paper
Colored pencils

How to Make a Fish Tessellation:

Here’s an easy principle to keep in mind for making your own tessellations. If you start with a shape that tessellates, like a square or a rectangle, you can easily make a more complicated shape that tessellates. Specifically, you can remove part of the tessellating shape on one side, and as long as you add that material to the other side of the shape, it will still tessellate.

So let’s make a fish!

Start with an index card. To make a fish shape, cut the shape for the nose out of the back end of the fish. The cutaway part now looks like a tail. Tape the nose to the other end of the index card.

Then make a cut on the bottom of the fish that will become the fin on the top of the fish.

Tape the fin to the top of the fish.

Then trace the fish on paper. Use a Sharpie to outline the fish and then add an eye, mouth, and fins.

I used our printer/copier to make copies of our fish tessellation, and then we colored them all different colors.

If you don’t have access to a printer or copier, you can re-trace the fish multiple times. This requires more effort for sure, but it definitely works!

You can make this project with just a few people at home, or do this with a class! We had three of us working together to make 9 fish. With a class, you could make a much larger “school” of fish.

We glued our fish to a piece of oversized construction paper. Use poster board if you have more fish and need a larger space.

I just love how the finished artwork turned out! It’s so colorful and beautiful!

We used Prismacolor colored pencils. These are absolutely the BEST! They are definitely not the cheapest, but the quality is amazing and they have such rich colors.

Are you ready to print your fish tessellation pattern? As I said above, it’s really easy to create your own fish tessellation. But if you’d rather print our template, I’ve got one!

Visit the link below. The file will open and you have print or save from there.

CLICK HERE: Fish Tessellation Pattern