I firmly believe it is important for our children to learn about the incredible diversity of earth's animals and how many are endangered and which ones may soon die out. This lesson helps students learn about animals that live in the arctic biome, such as polar bears and the arctic fox. This lesson uses black construction paper and pastels. Children LOVE drawing with pastels but a few warnings are in order as they can be VERY messy! I always warn my students to work from the top down in coloring the northern lights and also not to smudge the chalk by carefully lifting their hand up after drawing. It WILL get all over their fingers. (Oil pastels can also be used). I recommend beginning by searching Google images using the key words "northern lights" to look at beautiful examples of this unusual phenomena. Using pastels on black construction paper, have them draw their own version of the northern lights, coloring all the way down the black paper. Next, spray the chalk drawing with hair spray, if possible to seal the chalk and prevent smudging. Next, I would have my students do research on one or two arctic animals. I had a simple sheet of questions asking: 1) What is the name of your animal? 2) What environment/habitat does it live in (ocean, tundra, icebergs, etc. 3) What does your animal eat? 4) What is its place in the food chain (predator, prey, etc.) 5) Why is it endangered? 6) What are three things we personally can do to save it from extinction? (This can be a complicated answer and should require some deeper thinking instead of "just stop killing them." An animal such as the polar bear is impacted by climate change and loss of sea ice, so what can we do to stop climate change? The final step involves adding black silhouettes of a hill, land, trees, and the animal itself. These are then glued to the bottom of the page, being careful not to make the silhouettes so big that they cover up the beautiful northern lights. Here are some good links to use: https://www.enchantedlearning.com/coloring/arcticanimals.shtml and https://www.worldwildlife.org/places/arctic and https://www.un-habitat.org/endangered-animals-arctic-region/
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March 2024
AuthorMy name is Mrs. Krupa and I'm an elementary art teacher at Oxbow Elementary. I'm a professional harpist turned art teacher of 20 years. I'll share art lessons and ideas on these pages, what works and doesn't. Enjoy! Categories
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