First grade artists read several books by Jane Yolan and Mark Teague. We focused the most on their book "How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?" We looked at the patterns on the dinosaurs including stripes, polka dots and zig-zags. As a class we drew a dinosaur from a still-life looking at a toy dinosaur. We drew him (or her) by looking at the dinosaur and looking for shapes--an oval body, rectangle neck, etc. Then we added patterns and colors of our own to our dinosaurs using markers. Then on another sheet of drawing paper we drew the bedroom. We tried to make our bedrooms look 3-D as we talked about perspective in Art. We used oil pastels and paint dabbers to finish our rooms. When they were dry we glued our dinosaurs on top of our rooms to make it look like they are in the room. This was a new project that came out great!
