If I Were an Animal Lesson Plan

If I Were an Animal

If you could have an animal body, what creature would you be? Why? Draw your dream and then spin a tale about your adventures.

1. Choose an animal. What animal characteristic would you like to experience? Would you run like the wind on four legs? Or fly over your house with strong wings? Or swim to ocean depths using your flippers and tail? Use your imagination to dream up a new way of seeing your head combined with an animal, fish, or bird body.

2. Fill in the background. For your background and the large shapes of your drawing, use the under colors of black, brown, purple, and red found in Crayola Overwriters® Markers.

3. Draw on top! Use the over colors of pink, yellow, green, and light blue to draw on top of your background. Add interesting and zany features to your nonsense creature.

4. Write an imaginative story. With Crayola Erasable Colored Pencils, write a creative story about your adventures. Tell where you live and what you eat. Do you pal around with your old friends?

Adult supervision is required for any arts & crafts project.

Create animal or insect mix-up books. Draw several animals on the same size paper. Lay one on top of the other and staple them together. Cut through all the pictures, dividing the animals into sections of heads, abdomens, and feet. Flip sections to change a creature’s head or body parts and create a new nonsense character.
Students with special needs may prefer to look at animal pictures and in mirrors when making their drawings. Some may benefit from talking about their stories with an adult to help them think through the implications of an imaginary body.