Giraffe in the Jungle

It was funny MaryMaking posted about her Jennifer Mercede giraffe inspired lesson today because I was about to take photos of my version! 

After that I couldn't resist to post them even though they are not quite finished. 

(These are also not my best photos...)

 We began by drawing the giraffe from the front view. The kids drew designs in the spots. They carefully colored their new best buddies in with oil pastel. 

The next part of the lesson was for the kids to learn how to make 'real' trees instead of lollipop trees. We glued craft paper on to turquoise construction paper to make the trunk and branches.

Part three the kids thought was totally separate but little did they know what I had in store!

They looked at the branching- vein design found on leaves. 

We used this as a jumping off point and then the kids added other designs using sharpie and colored them in with construction paper crayon.

The other surprise was that the kids were recycling our used table paper. They could choose to use either the painty side or the clean side. 

Then using the "batik" same process as I've posted before with crumpling craft paper/grocery bag in water, flattening, an painting with watery green tempera cake paint - we transformed our old table paper into abstract batiked paper. 

 The students traced leaf shapes onto the back of the paper, cut them out, and added them on to their trees. 

Today we began to attach it all together. 

We still have to finish some things up but here are some previews!