Lessons with Laughter: Giraffes Can't Dance Art Project!

Have you heard of Deep Space Sparkle before? It has some of the most amazing ideas for art projects that I've ever seen! I discovered it 3 years ago and have been using it ever since! My first year teaching I taught art to the 4th and 5th graders once a week, so I would refer to the site constantly to get ideas. The past 2 years I have been lucky to have an amazing art teacher come and teach my students once a week, so we haven't been doing as many big art projects. I am a huge art lover though (and so are my kiddos!) so I am always looking for opportunities to squeeze things in!

After reading one of my favorite books, Giraffe's Can't Dance, to teach my students about perseverance (You can see my post here on some of the books I use to teach character in my classroom), I decided to try out this art project with my kiddos. You can see the art lesson where I got the idea here!

After reading the book and having our discussion on character, we started right away on our art project! We did a directed draw for the giraffe and then my students decided what position they wanted to have him (or her) dancing! I am so happy with how these turned out and my students were very impressed with their work!

(Love how this kiddo added a bow to the giraffe!)

Also, I was so excited to hang these up on a new line that my husband and I put up! I don't have a ton of room in my classroom to display projects that my kiddos do on these big pieces of construction paper, so we put in an IKEA wire and it works perfectly! I have some projects facing inward so we can see them in the classroom, and some facing outward so people can see them from outside the classroom!