Zebras – With a Twist

As a final wrap up to our African Cultural study, my third graders created these sweet little zebras.

We talked about why zebras are so beautifully marked (so predators can’t focus on an individual zebra to hunt in the herd) and looked at zebra patterns.  We drew our zebras on 9×12 tagboard, breaking them down into shapes – rounded rectangle body, triangle head – and traced around large tongue depressors for the legs.

Third Grade Zebra

The room was absolutely quiet as they filled in their black zebra patterns!  We added color with bright highlighter markers, cut them out, and fringed bright tag for the mane and tail.

Last step – printing a “zebra” border with cardboard dipped in tempera.  Aren’t they fun?!

Third Grade Zebra-Printing

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Grinches

Second Grade artists have been enjoying our Grinch project.  We drew them with Sharpie markers and added grinch green color to his face, using our understanding of shading and value that we developed this fall with our pumpkin project.  They also drew a fancy border around Mr. Grinch and made it smaller than his head so he “popped out” of the picture frame.  We finished up with a little printmaking with tempera paint dipped in bottle caps for a fun frame.Grinch Grinch Grinch