Tropical Dreamscape

Camouflage your favorite rainforest animals!

• 1.

  With your classmates, compile a class list of animals that live in tropical climates. Choose an animal to research, and find details about its habitat.

• 2.

  Create a Tropical Dreamscape on large white drawing paper. In the foreground use black Crayola® Markers to draw overlapping tropical vines, plants, flowers, and trees. Add detailed patterns to trunks and stems.

• 3.

  Use a marker to outline your animal hidden behind your foreground foliage.

• 4.

  Separate the background and foreground of the environment (such as plants, mountains, sky) with horizontal wavy marker lines.

• 5.

  Use Crayola Markers in tropical colors to fill in your foreground elements, background divisions, and hidden animal.

• 6.

  Exchange drawings with your friends. Locate and identify the hidden animals. What graphic techniques did the artists use to hide their animals?

Benefits

• Children research information about animal habitats and plant growth in tropical environments.
• Students incorporate concepts about these habitats to create unique art with foregrounds and backgrounds that camouflage tropical creatures.
• Children use visual skills to search for hidden animals in peer artwork.

Adaptations

• Exchange tropical dreamscapes. Write or tell adventure stories about walking into the Tropical Dreamscape and meeting the hidden animal.
• Write acrostic poems about the hidden animals. Use markers to write the letters of the animal's name vertically in large block letters, then add descriptive words horizontally incorporating each letter. Display tropical dreamscapes with acrostics behind t