Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Dancing Giraffes


This is a fun lesson I saw several years ago on www.deepspacesparkle.com

First we read "Giraffes Can't Dance" by Giles Andre. I put the book under the document camera as I read so the children can see it on the Smart Board.

Next we draw Gerald the Giraffe on yellow paper with a brown crayon and color his spots in orange.

The next class, we paint the background. I don't prefer to use liquid tempera paint because it's difficult to clean off of palettes and brushes, and you have to change the water constantly, but I make an exception for this project because the effects are so neat. We use white, yellow, and blue paint. I have the children work in a specific order so that they will need to clean their brushes minimally while working.

We start by drawing a horizon line with a crayon. We then draw a circle in the sky for the moon and paint it white. The bottom half of the paper gets painted yellow. (clean brushes at this point).

Next we paint the rest of the sky blue. Clean brushes. Dip brush in white paint and spiral out from the moon without adding new paint. The moon will appear to glow!

Next we mix the yellow and blue paint together to make green. No need to clean brushes! We paint the grass green (it was yellow before) and we use the back of the brush to draw blades of grass. The blades will look yellow!



The last session we cut and glue Gerald to the background.

Kindergarten work:




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