Take a Walk on the Wild Side
Correlation
These projects correlate with units that teach about culture, writing units, as well as math and history.
Objectives
Students will create a torn paper animal face (lion) or and African mask based on their personality traits. They will begin to understand proportion and design as well as some cultural information based on different regions of Africa.
Teacher Input
MASKS
- Talk with the children about personality traits and what makes them unique. Many tribes in Africa base their masks on the uniqueness of themselves.
- Utilizing cut paper, raffia and the paper texturizer (optional) have the students create their own personality mask.
MASKS
Talk with the children about lion territory and habitat. Learn about the basic  shape of a lion head without the mane.Â
Have each student cut out a large lion face and then tear small pieces to crate the mane, eyes, nose and mouth.
It is very important, with both projects, to emphasize to the children that they need to glue each piece down very tight. They may not have anything sticking up or over the edge of the paper.
Have the students lay their whole project out before gluing. This will help them to visualize what the final product will look like.
This project is easily adapt and/or expanded to other subjects/topics. Some examples might be: additional animals out of Africa, Animals of Australia, Rainforest Animals, etc…
Grade Levels
K-5
Time
2-3 Sessions
Materials
- 8.5″ x 11″ white art paper
- Â various colored paper
- glue
- hole punch
- raffiaÂ
- scissors
- paper texturizer (optional)
- examples of project