A Trip To The Zoo...

It's that time of year when everyone is starting to get a bit restless and summer vacation is on the horizon so I'm working hard to keep everyones attention and keep art fun.  One of my favorite things about my job is working with other teachers to provide lessons in multiple subjects.  I really do feel that the more integration used in schools the better the learning experience will be.  This is why I was thrilled when one of our first grade teachers approached me about doing a project with them.  First graders are headed to the zoo in a few weeks and were starting a research project on animals in our zoo.  They would be using various methods to learn about their animal and creating a book so I was asked to help them create their book covers.  Due to the end of the year stuff that always seems to pop up I wanted to make sure this lesson could be completed in 2 class periods so that it would be completed before their trip to the zoo.  Week one was spent looking at the images of the animals and sketching and on week 2 I had card stock "book covers" with their animals and names ready for their creations!  I was amazed at how wonderful their work turned out.  You could definitely tell the students who had been working hard on their research projects and had seen many images of their subjects.  Here are a few of our Book Covers!