I love these magical animals created by 1st and 2nd graders! We started by looking at animals in art, including "Cat and Bird" by Paul Klee and the many Blue Dog paintings by George Rodrigue.
Day 1 we read THE CAT AND THE BIRD, by Geraldine Elschner which was inspired by Klee's painting. What a great idea for a book! To get started I used instructions on how to draw a simple cat from Kathy Barbo's wonderful website, Art Projects for Kids. We looked at how to use basic shapes, beginning with a circle for the head, to draw a variety of animals. The first day they drew with pencils then outlined with sharpies.
Day 2 we read WHY IS BLUE DOG BLUE, by George Rodrigue, then they went to work adding color to their animals using crayons. Day 3 we looked at more examples of Blue Dog with various backgrounds, then used tempera cakes to finish the backgrounds.
Finally, on Day 4, students wrote titles and descriptions for their animals, which they loved doing! For kids who really struggled with writing I transcribed for them.
These are so great! I miss getting to work with you, and if I had kids I would love for them to be in your class! Keep doing what you do! Thank you so much for the book for Baby Henry. He and my sis love it!
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