Back to School Gators

September 2, 2022

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I’m back! After two long years I finally have time in my schedule again to regularly blog about my lessons. This year I am kicking off by having every grade make a different version of our school mascot. Here at Steere we say “have a great gator day” and these different works of art will fill our hallway bulletin board so we are having a “great gator year” all year long.

The first group to finish their back to school gators was first grade. We used Kwik Stix and 12×18 paper for this big colorful masterpieces. If you haven’t tried Kwik Stix yet you really should they are amazing! They look like glue sticks but are tempera paint and go on smooth while also drying very quickly. I love using them with my PreK-1st graders because they big chunky stick makes it easier for them to fill in their shapes all the way when we color.

For the drawing steps I am trying out these generic “Tempera Paint Sticks” from Amazon. They apply a little thicker than true Kwik Stix which made them take a tiny bit longer to dry but it wasn’t much at all. They also were a little more coarse around the edges of the lines.

Below are the drawing steps for this gator. I designed it after spending hours searching through different Alligator clip art and stock images, its a little bit of a lot of different pictures pieced together to work well for little hands but still be fun.