1st Grade: Shape Animals With Depth

I guess I need to figure out how to do better organization for blog sharing!  I forgot to post these and we finished them back in November!  After we finished our realistic pumpkin patches in 1st grade, we moved onto drawing animals using shape, based on this project I found on Pinterest.  The link for the pin takes you back to the We Heart Art blog, but I can't seem to find the exact post on the blog.

We spent a day practicing how to draw animals using shapes, using a worksheet I created, and then drew them on watercolor paper the 2nd day.  During this process, we reviewed what a horizon line and background is, as well as what good details would be for an animal drawing.

We traced them with sharpies, and then on the 3rd day, we painted them with watercolor.  Finally, on the 4th day, we talked about the foreground and middle ground.  We cut out leaves from green construction paper and glued them around the edge.

Now, this happened to be one of those art projects where I didn't have an example to show them...I wanted them to have a "discovery learning" moment as we pieced the entire thing together.  However, I did do a demonstration of how to draw an animal big on the watercolor paper.  Just like always, I had about 90% of my students draw a cat for their animal because I drew one on the board, even though we had practiced drawing dogs, birds, and bears as well!