Lions, Giraffes, and Paint... oh my!

This week and the last have been rather "jungle" or wild animal themed. Both of these projects came from other sources I'm sure somewhere on the internet, but I can't recall exactly where. If you want to claim fame to these feel free.

My first project to share I'm calling Radiating Lions. I did this with 1st graders although I'm sure it could be done with most an elementary level student. We used white drawing paper first that I cut into a square. I then demo'ed for students the following drawing which they did as well. 

I'm running low on sharpies this year so I had students trace with black crayon over their pencils lines. You could also by pass the pencil and go straight to crayon. **And you don't necessarily have to use black, brown would look great too!

Students painted the faces with yellow cake tempera. (Oh how I love cake tempera!) Then we painted radiating lines from the face outward with yellow, then orange, and lastly brown.  This paint dries rather quickly so we glued on pieces of raffia and yarn onto the radiating lines as well. These turned out so wonderful! Definitely a repeat for next year!

This project took 2 forty minute sessions.

Giraffe Portraits!  These I did with my second graders. I wish I had discovered this at the beginning of the school year. Our school mascot is a giraffe and this would have been perfect to have hung in the lobby the majority of the school year.
We used a 12 x 18" piece of paper cut in half long ways. We drew the following steps together with pencil and traced with black crayons (or markers if you got 'em)

Students also colored the giraffe spots with brown or orange crayons. The second day we painted the giraffe with yellow tempera cake. The background is blue. Lastly we glued pieces of brown construction paper for the "hair" or mane on the neck.

Love these!  They have been a huge hit at the school!

So many faces, so many designs, so little webspace.

This project took two forty-minute sessions. It could possibly take three depending on how you space it out. An excellent book to read as an intro would be Giraffe's Can't Dance by Giles Andreae.