Adding a few manatees to the décor in a child's room is both charming and instructional. Manatees are enormous, gray, wrinkled, and gentle aquatic mammals. They are slow-moving herbivores related to the elephant and the greatest threat to their existence is danger from human activity. Boats collide with them; they become entangled in trap lines; fish hooks and garbage kill them. Art projects, such as the one sponsored by the Florida-based Save the Manatee Club, are an effective way to study the habits and habitats of this endangered species.
1 Paint the framed and prepared canvas the vivid blue color of the springs where manatees live during the winter months. When the blue paint dries, draw sand dunes around the edges of the canvas. Draw sprays of sea grasses and a few aquatic plants near the dunes and in the middle of the spring.
2 Paint the sand dunes a sand color and sprinkle real sand on them while they are still wet. Let the dunes dry.
3 While the dunes are drying, use an original sketch or the template provided on the Save the Manatee Club website to create six manatees on oak tag. Paint the manatees or color them with markers and staple two together along the top of the form. Stuff the doubled manatees with cotton balls and finish stapling them all the way around the body. Glue the female, or loop, half of a Velcro dot to the back of each manatee.
4 Paint the green reeds, grasses and aquatic plants. Paint the hook, or male, halves of six Velcro dots the same blue as the spring water. The paint goes on the rough side of the dot with the sticky part that catches. Glue these blue Velcro dots to spots next to grasses and in the middle of the spring. The female dots on the stuffed manatees will stick to them.
5 When the canvas is completely dry, mount it on the wall and stick the manatees in place in their habitat, using the Velcro dots. The manatees can be moved around the spring, using the Velcro, and the wall art becomes an interactive lesson in the life of an endangered species.
