Fingerprint Koalas

Today's Australian animal is the koala! I taught the kids all about this marvelous marsupial and then we headed to the art center. Here is my example of the art project:

I don't always like showing an example of mine to the kids first because they tend to copy it too much, but I felt it would have been a lot for them to take in without a visual aid. The first thing they did was draw a tree trunk. Very simple, nothing fancy. Then, because I didn't have a gray ink pad for the fingerprints, I painted gray paint onto plates. It worked perfectly.

The body of the koala is made with the thumb, the head is made with the index finger, and the tail and ears are made with the pinky. They made their prints on the sides of the tree.

When the paint was dry, about 20 minutes later, the kids went to the coloring table to put on the finishing touches. These turned out so cute! Some kids made a few koalas:

And some kids made a whole bunch:

Let's have a closer look at that last one, shall we?

So CUTE!!

I also taught a little bit about another marsupial -- the Tasmanian devil! Our "art" for that was a coloring sheet of Taz from Looney Tunes.

Sadly, only 2 kids had heard of him. Is he not around anymore or is Looney Tunes just not as popular now?

Koala Fun Fact: Baby koala's eat their mother's poop! See, koalas eat the leaves of eucalyptus trees, which are so poisonous they would kill most animals. The mother koala's special droppings, called pap, contain microscopic germs from her intestines which will help the baby digest its own food when it is old enough to eat eucalyptus leaves.

Tasmanian Devil Fun Fact: It is the largest meat-eating marsupial and can crush bones with its teeth!

**Linking up to Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas!**