Safari Adventure

This is a project I have wanted to do with my kids and has been in the works for months. I have been asking friends to save their toilet paper rolls for me. I wanted to do some recycled art with them. Here is how my lesson went.

First I checked out books from the library about different animal environments. I had them in groups look through these books to discover which types of animals lived in which environments. They only had one book per group. At the end of their kindergarten year they still are terrible at sharing and looking at a book together. Oh well. Then as a class we went over which types of animals lived in the sea, desert, rain forest, and mountains.

Then I gave them 2 toilet paper rolls that I had glued together with a sting attached. I told that that these were magical binoculars in which they could see things that you can’t see in normal life. I had them decorate their binoculars with markers. As they were decorating, some of them were looking through it and saying they didn't see anything special. To which I responded, “We haven’t put the magic on yet so don’t worry. “

After the decorated the binoculars I told them that the magic comes from their brain. So we took the magic from our brain to put into the binoculars. (The idea was that they use their imagination to see things that are not there.) Then I took them to different areas on the playground outside. I told them that we were approaching the mountains and asked them what type of animals they saw through their binoculars. (The hope is that they would remember animals that live in the mountains that we talked about previously). Then I took them to another area to enter into the rain forest. They started getting more into it once we saw a lion and had to run away from the lion. Then our course at every environment there was another dangerous animal right behind me that we had to run away from. It was cool to see one of my students who has a lot of behavior problems really be engaged and have fun with this activity.

I loved this lesson because it included science, visual art, reading, and theater. I love the integration of the academics and art. And I did this the last week of school.

Thank you all who saved their toilet paper rolls for me. Very successful project.

The picture above is not one of my students. I don’t like to post pictures of students online and especially without parental consent. I took pictures of them doing this if you would like to see but I won’t post them.