Towering Giraffes

With all the attention that April the giraffe, at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, NY, is getting, I thought it was a perfect time to join in on the fun by sharing this project that found my students going through the roof with excitement!

They were thrilled with the subject matter. I mean who doesn’t love giraffes? They stand tall and have big hearts – something we want all of our students to do too.

One of my objectives was to get my student artists to draw bigger than usual, this is no small feat because I have found that no matter what size paper you give some, they have a secret yearning to become postage stamp designers. To encourage this larger than life drawing we started on the white board and Smartboard in my classroom – a challenge to see who could draw the tallest giraffe. Then, I gave them tall, narrow, blue paper, and because of that we needed space that would allow us to work BIG. This meant the hallway, on our stomachs; stretching not only our arms to reach the top of the paper, but our ability to draw bigger than ever before. And blue because I think that starting off a project on color helps with the beginning of a background, which many students overlook.

I was seeing amazing things as I looked around. Even though the subject matter was the same, each giraffe took on a personality of his/her own. That’s an amazing thing about student artists, they all bring their fascinating personalities to their work, and whether they realize it or not, it shows!

Our giraffes were completed using chalk. Who doesn’t love chalk? Okay, many don’t, but the colors, the blending, the experience of nine-year-olds turning up their noses at the thought of it. What art teacher wouldn’t want that experience? Exactly!

Pam