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!
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