Puffy Pandas

Colors is our theme this week, but since my kids already know their colors I thought I'd make it a little more fun for them by teaching them about animals that go along with our Color of the Day. I love teaching about animals. LOVE. Especially when I get to learn something new along with the children. Today's colors were Black and White, so I chose to teach about the Giant Panda. In the past, I've taught about pandas for my Endangered Animals unit, but I have no idea if I'll get to do that theme this year. So first I made copies of a panda coloring sheet (clip art, actually, found here) that I found through google. Then I put out several colors of tissue paper squares.

I know our colors today are just black and white, but I wanted the kids to have more choices than that.
Then the kids scrunched up the tissue squares, dipped them in glue, and plopped them on their panda page.

Wherever there was black on the panda, they could put a colored tissue square. The white tissue squares were for the white part of the panda.

This project took a long time. After awhile I was scrunching the tissue paper up for the kids, so they only had to worry about dipping them in glue and putting them on their paper. Luckily we had a small class and so everyone was able to get it done in time.
When they were semi-dry, I cut them out (very difficult at times!) and put them on colored paper.

It sure made our display very colorful!

Don't you love the belly buttons?

One of my favorite panda books to read is Panda Kindergarten, by Joanne Ryder.

It's a story about the Panda Kindergarten at the Wolong Nature Reserve in China. I love it because it teaches them about pandas. The kids love it because the pandas are just like them! They play on the playground, eat lunch, and take naps! And it's got some great pictures.

Fun Fact: When a giant panda is born, it's blind, pink, fuzzy, and the size of a stick of butter!