Friday, May 20, 2011

1st Grade Dancing Giraffes


 This is one of my favorite first grade projects.  It is based on the book "Giraffes Can't Dance" by Giles Andreae.  After reading the book, each student draws a dancing giraffe.  I had some kids come up with some pretty smooth dance moves this year.  The giraffes are colored with colored pencil.  On another paper, kids paint either a blue or purple night sky with a nice glowing moon (using white for the moon while the sky is still wet).  The grass is first painted entirely yellow.  Once the yellow drys, I have the kids paint green over the yellow.  When I'm demonstrating this step, I get a lot of puzzled looks from the kids.  I then immediately flip the brush over and use the handle to scrape away some of the wet green paint to reveal the "grass."  Finally the giraffe is cut out and glued onto the background.  This is a project that is nearly 100% successful.


For the lesson plan for this project, click here!




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3 comments:

  1. Alison MoffitMay 20, 2011 at 3:32 PM

    I love this project and am glad Ben got to take part in it! Thank you for helping kids to show their creativity!- Alison Moffit

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  2. Richard GibsonMarch 4, 2012 at 2:25 PM

    Nice project-

    Good line & figure movement, and I'm always a fan of the color-on-colr Eric Carle style paint an' scratch.

    But I went to open the lesson -and it is on Kandinsky painting at the bottom of the paragraph,not Giraffes.

    Could you email this if you have it handy?

    Thanks for the nice blog.

    Richard Gibson
    GVSU Student Teacher
    in Michigan

    ReplyDelete
  3. Zach StollerMarch 5, 2012 at 11:50 AM

    Richard- Thanks for the positive comments and the heads up on the link. I fixed it and it should be good to go. I would love to email you the lesson, but I'm afraid I don't have your email address. Post it on here and I'd be happy to send it to you. Otherwise, click on the (now correct) link. Thanks!

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