Masks are fun way for children to explore and move and act in different ways. For our Forest-Friendly Week of the Smart Summer Challenge, we made Woodland Animal Masks.
Some of the things I like about this craft is that it gives them control over the process, encourages them to be observant, and also serves as a fun prop to continue the activity. I’m chatting more about crafts over at the Random House Kids: Read & Play Summer Fun Community and I hope you will come join me there to share your thoughts!
Materials
- paper plate
- construction paper
- crayons, markers, or paints
- yarn or chenille stems
Directions
1. Ask your children what animals they might find in the forest. This will generally be easier if you’ve first seen some forest friends on your hikes and/or read books about forest animals. My kids came up with the deer, groundhog, and raccoon in our own backyard woods, the rabbit we saw on one of our hikes this summer, the fox, and the bear. My daughter chose the fox and my son chose the bear.
2. Find “inspiration pictures” of the animals. Cut out the eyes of the mask.
3. Ask the children what colors they will need for those animals and take out those colors. Color-in the masks those colors. We used cray-pas.
My daughter used both red and orange for her fox.
4. Shape the masks if necessary. We left the bear round but gave the fox a more triangular snout.
5. Use the construction paper to add in ears and noses, asking the children what shapes and colors they need to make these features.
6. Punch holes in either side of the mask and use yarn or chenille stems as ties.
7. Put on the masks and enjoy!
I asked the children how their animals sound…
…and how they sound.
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This post is part of the Smart Summer Challenge–we’re encouraging you to beat the summer vacation slide with fun, everyday learning activities! You can take just 10 minutes a day to find the educational opportunities all around us or get as elaborate as you like! Whatever you do, we invite you to share your experiences each week in our linky, which goes up every Friday during the challenge and stays open through Thursday.
Find out more about the Smart Summer Challenge and grab our free calendar of summer learning ideas, and “like” the Smart Summer Challenge page on Facebook.
Find more great ideas from your hostesses, Candace of Naturally Educational (that’s me!), Amy of TeachMama.com, and MaryLea of Pink and Green Mama!
Apple now has Rhapsody as an app, which is a great start, but it is currently hampered by the inability to store locally on your iPod, and has a dismal 64kbps bit rate. If this changes, then it will somewhat negate this advantage for the Zune, but the 10 songs per month will still be a big plus in Zune Pass favor.
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