Russian Tigers

My students are still "in" Russia and I already found myself stumped as to what to do with my kinders. I have so many go-to plans that develop art concepts and fine motor skills but not necessarily Russian or Asian concepts.  I flipped through a children's book about Russian and discovered that tigers were nearly extinct there until the last 20 years or so when they began working to rebuild the species that was declining. While scoping out Pinterest I came across this image of a tiger and I found myself inspired. 

Click photo for credit link

I happen to have an adorable book called "It's a Tiger!" by David LaRochelle that I got at the school book fair last year, and it was a perfect link to Russia, literacy, and an art project that teaches fine motor skills (drawing, cutting, gluing)! The kids adored this book. Every kid had a smile on their face as they chimed in "It's a tiger!" on every other page. It's super fun to read aloud too.

 The project started by having the kids glue orange and white strips of paper in a pattern on a half (9X12") piece of black construction paper. I talked about A, B patterns and then asked them to leave a black space between each strip to make it a more complicated pattern. A, B, C, B, A, B, C, B. Sounds complicated, but they totally got it!

The first class they were also able to get an orange square and red trapezoid glued down for the beginning of a face. 

Student work.

Student work

Next class the students will take two orange and two white strips of paper and fold them in half and cut them. They'll take one half and repeat the process to get four small and two medium pieces of both colors. 

They'll glue only the center of their tiger face to the center of a 12X18" piece of black construction paper.

Next, they'll add the medium sized strips in a pattern above the tiger's head to create a body.

Glue down the top of the head.

Add two rows of strips in a pattern to create the legs.

Glue down the bottom of the head.

And here's my kindergarten (sample) version of the first picture. I should start having student projects to post on Wednesday (I think!). I'm so excited to see them done!

 I do have one special needs student in kindergarten, so I created a storyboard of the second day's steps. I was concerned that it might be a bit much for him and, really, all the kids benefit from a storyboard. I was already taking pictures to put in my sub plans for Thursday, so it fit to put them together for the kids while I was at it. 

Click here for the storyboard in my Google Docs