Make Your Own Creature with Fabric and Paper Scraps

Little artists love digging into a big box of fabric scraps to find the perfect patterned piece that speaks to them.

We have an upcoming Fine Arts Night with the theme of Animals. We are calling it “Wild about the Arts”, which someone suggested in the Facebook art teachers group.  The 1st graders made these fun creature collages.

First we read the book Zigzag by Robert Souci and looked at the illustrations of fabric dolls. The students made creature collages, either of real animals or imaginary creations.  They had a selection of fabric scraps, solid color paper scraps and animal print paper to choose from. Pieces were cut, assembled and glued on to a piece of paper.  Backgrounds could be added with paper scraps or markers.

After the students were finished, they filled out an artist statement sheet telling about their creatures.

You can download the PDF version here:  MY CREATURE COLLAGE artist statement.

My daughter heard me talking about this project and she wanted to make up her own creature.  She seems to feel bad that I always share artwork from my kids at school but not her artwork (she goes to a different school.)  She is also in 1st grade.  She just wanted to draw her creature instead of making a collage.  I think her drawing is adorable.

(I helped her write the words for her artist statement.  Some of it is her handwriting, some of it is mine.)  She really liked the idea of making her own creature and then also telling all about it by writing.

Have you ever used the book Zig Zag with your classes?