Woven Alligator Puppets in 1st grade

A student favorite! I originally found and adapted this project from my favorite art ed blogger's site, Cassie Stephens. She is my official art ed guru!

The first graders have worked hard in creating woven alligator puppets. I taught this lesson last year and a lot of my students demanded their chance to create one this year.

It begins with a lesson on texture. I have a little poem I teach the kids so they can remember the vocabulary word. It goes like this:

Texture (make a T with hands)
is how something feels (rubs hands)
it can be sharp (say OW! and pretend to touch something sharp)
it can be smoooooth (pretends to touch something smooth)
it can be sticky (pretends to touch something sticky with fingers)
like goo
EW! (pretends to fling goo from hands)

It is super fun.

I then show a visual presentation of alligators in the wild and a close up of their skin. I ask the students to describe the texture to me, they determine it to be bumpy and dry. They then talk to me about how they can recreate or "simulate" that texture in a drawing. I give them green construction paper and they draw their alligator texture with crayon.

We then review how to create a paper loom...we already did this with the Chinese Lantern project for the Lunar New Year. So they were familiar with the process.

Then they were supplied with pre-cut strips of weft in 2 values of green, light and dark. They were instructed to weave a light dark pattern with their paper loom.

The next class the students were shown how to create the puppet alligator head. They created the puppet mouth first out of pre-folded manila paper (check out Cassie's blog for amazing details in creating this device). They were then instructed how to add collage paper in producing the alligator head and attaching it to the puppet mouth.

They are mastering the pop-up collage technique.

The following class they glued their weavings to the puppet head to create the body, cut and glued arms, legs, and a tail. To finish they added additional textures on the body parts with crayons.

Look at those teeth! I love this level of engagement with detail.

Great patterns for texture!

They loved chomping their alligator puppets when they were finished. I was pleased to see their smiles and successes.

Thanks for stopping by!