What you need:

• White air drying clay
• Acrylic paint – we used a blue colour
• Rolling pin
• Knife (or clay knife)
• Large, colourful sequins – ours here are oval but round ones work too
• Googly eyes

Step 1: Prepare the clay

Roll some air drying clay into a ball. Knead it as well as you can to remove any air bubbles.

Then add the paint. This step is optional – you can leave the clay white – we just found the fish looked much better coloured.

Push your thumb into the centre of your ball to make a hollow.

Squeeze in a blob of blue paint.

Step 2: Knead the colour in

This next bit is messy so we recommend using gloves. Even washing up gloves will do.

Knead the clay, mixing in the blue paint.

Keep squashing and squeezing it, adding in more blue paint as you go. Continue until your clay has a nice marbled blue colour.

Step 3: Cut out a fish shape

Roll out your ball of clay onto a chopping board with a rolling pin.

Carefully cut out an outline of a fish, using a clay knife or a sharp kitchen knife. (Adults should do this bit, especially if the knife is sharp.)

If you don’t get the shape right first time don’t worry. You can always just squish it all up and roll it out again!

When you have your fish shape you can use the knife to add an extra detail to the tail and fins. Make small indentations with the knife diagonally across the fish tail and fins.

Step 4: Lay down your first row of colourful scales

Press in a googly eye onto the fish’s ‘face’.

Then start pushing colourful sequins into the body of the fish.

We started with one column of sequins, slighting overlapping each one so that they looked like scales.

Step 5: Cover it in colourful scales

After your first line start pressing in your second line of sequins just behind the first.

You can see how they build up to look like rainbow coloured fish scales.