Animal Masquerade

1. Pre-cut enough mask shapes out of poster board for your entire class. Using a hot glue gun, glue a dowel stick to the right side of each mask. Put the masks aside.
2. Ask students to find a partner and discuss their favorite animals: What color is the animal? Does it have fur or scales? What climate does the animal live in?
3. Give students Crayola® Construction paper and a pencil. Ask the students to draw the outline of their animal and details (eyes, nose, fur, scales, etc). Encourage them to make the animal double the size of their own heads.
4. Instruct students to use Crayola® Classic Markers to make the details of their animals bold.
5. Ask the students to use Crayola® Washable Kids Paint to accent details on their animals with a Crayola® Watercolor Brush. If they would like to add some sparkle, encourage them to use Crayola® Glitter Glue.
6. Allow the art to dry.
7. Provide each student with one of the pre-assembled masks and Crayola® No-Drip School Glue.
8. Ask students to glue the mask cut out to the back center of their animal creation.
9. Give the students a pair of scissors.
10. Instruct the students to cut out the eyes and mouth with scissors to finish their product.
11. Play music and watch your class as they have an animal masquerade!

LA: Speaking and Listening: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade level topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

SCI: Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.

SCI: Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.

SCI: Construct an argument that plants and animals have internal and external structures that function to support survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction.

SCI: Use a model to describe that animals’ receive different types of information through their senses, process the information in their brain, and respond to the information in different ways.

VA: Students will initiate making works of art and design by experimenting, imagining and identifying content.

VA: Students will investigate, plan and work through materials and ideas to make works of art and design.

Use this project as an extension of the book “Bear Party” by William Pene Du Bois.

Assign students to choose either a mammal or a reptile and “debate” which classification of animals is more interesting!

Investigate the origin of a masquerade.

Use this activity in lieu of Halloween festivities if your school discourages students’ dressing up on Halloween.