"Trendy" is not me, but this project turned out looking like a piece of clothing you'd see hanging in the kids section at a department store. That was not my intention - but unexpected outcomes are always welcome with a project!
Our animal friend for letter "J" was a jaguar. Most of my students were already familiar with this animal thanks to pop tv (apparently Diego has a jaguar friend? - I'm not up on current kids shows...). Anyway, for our large letter "J" I decided to do jaguar prints - jaguars have a specific rosette spot pattern on their body and I thought that might be a fun art element in our project.
I started with pre-cut "J" shapes, I would have preferred orange, but I had a whole stack of purple "J's"cut out from a previous year that I wanted to use up (I'm all about using what I have on hand - actually I'm a little neurotic about it...).
To create the circular spot print I used the bottom of small plastic pop bottles, dipped in black paint. The bottles worked really well to create spots - and lots of spots quickly.
We also added a jaguar face to our "J" (I found a jaguar mask printable on Google images) and glued on googly eyes. They turned out great!
Another "J" center:
"Jellybeans" - super simple and super popular with the kiddos.
I placed a handful of colored floral rocks on a tray with sorting bowls and called them "jellybeans". That's all!
We:
- Sorted...
- Counted...
- Planted magic beans...
- Shared (and fought over them- typically the fighting is first- ha!)...
- Figured out which color had the most, which had the least...
- Put the in the bowls and shook them around...
- Made pictures out of them...
