Lesson 12 - Pandas

Continuing with our Chinese theme, this week the children made pandas.

First we talked about the type of animal a panda is, where they live, what they eat, and why the look different than other bears.  We looked at pictures of pandas on the laptop, then we talked about the types of geometric shapes that make up a panda’s body.

We looked at a step-by-step diagram which I had drawn that showed how to draw a panda using circles and oval shapes. The children then had a chance to practice drawing pandas using circles and ovals as the body parts. Next we made a panda with felt pieces that were pre-cut. The children glued the pieces of felt on a sheet of paper to construct their panda. They drew in the nose and mouth. After this was completed the children used crayons to illustrate a scene. Was their panda in a zoo, or in a forest, or eating bamboo, or even in outer space? They told a story with their illustrations. Some children put their panda in a pen (as in a zoo), others drew a house, or a mountain and one even added fairies.

The goal of this lesson was to learn some facts about pandas and use imagination to tell a story about their panda, which every child did successfully.