PEEEEE YEWWW--Do you smell that?

Kindergartners had their first taste (not literally, yuck!) of clay.  Kids always love clay especially when you trick them into thinking it's this super awesome magical stuff.  For kindergarteners I like to start out some sort of project using a pinch pot, just to keep it simple.  The past few years we made ladybugs, and yeah they were cute, but I was sick of those.  I was perusing the interwebs and ran across this project over at ARTventurous and adapted it to my needs. 

Especially with my kindergarteners, I like to start a project with some sort of literature.  This seemed like a no brainer, I'm going to read a story about a skunk.  I set upon the task of searching the school library using the keyword "skunk" and only one book came up, Move Over Rover.  Well this book is actually about a dog and the skunk has a short guest appearance of about 10 seconds, it was the best I could do.  Someone needs to write more books about skunks ASAP, kids love the grossness and smelliness of a skunk...think of all the art project possibilities. 

We started out with a simple pinch pot body, pinched up a couple ears, and pinched out a little nose.  Lastly we took a back of a pencil to poke a little hole in the back for the tail.  In one class I had the students attempt to use the pipe cleaners to make the tails.  Even with my superb step by step instructions only 2 students successfully made a tail, so I made the executive decision to just make the rest for the other classes.

The next class students placed a piece of masking tape down the back of the skunk and simply painted it black.  Since the air dry clay dries white I peeled the tape off to reveal a white stripe.  To finish it all off I hot glued on the tails and the eyes. 

I love these little guys.  I think they are super cute and funny.  One of the kindergarten teachers used her classes as a Christmas gift for the parents.  For the girls, they added a little bow to the head, and the boys added a little bow tie under the nose.  She then took a picture of each of her students holding a sign that read "Merry Christmas from your little stinker."  Pretty clever, right?  I wish I had some pictures of them, but what a great idea!