What a great tie-in to your curriculum for earth science and fossils. Did you use a handout or written instructions for your class or did your students "discover" the gyotaku printing experience on their own?

I used a handout, but it told them only a little background and had them discover the process themselves. This is the handout I made - if you run it as a slide show, the2nd slide has a labeled fish where the labels will appear one at a time.

how long did this take for your class?? I would love to do this but dont know if I have the time to add this in as a fun activity.

If you include background work on sedimentary rocks, it took about 5 days. Just fish printing was 1 day (41 minutes), but as presented in my lesson 3 days. I had the fish drawing assignment as homework the day before, then a crayon rubbing and labeling day as day 1. Homework that night was reading up on fossils and gyotaku. Day 2 was creating the printing process, homework was answering the review questions. Day 3 was reviewing class answers and creating a concept web on water's role in creating a fossil. So yeah, not quite just a fun activity... but we did have fun too!

Awesome lesson, really enjoyed reading through it and that was a great way to tie in fossils and have this fun activity fit your curriculum!