Dioramas

Cole came home from school one day and told us about his class visiting the 3rd grade classrooms and looking at the dioramas that they had made.  Cole was very interested and asked if we could make one.  I said that we could pick an animal or habitat and do research on its environment, and then make one.  All of a sudden, we were doing it the next day!  The kids picked out their animals while we found a couple of boxes, and we talked about what kind of habitat their animal would live in.  Because this ended up being very impromptu, there was no research done so we kept things pretty general.  We went for a little walk around the yard to see what we could find to add to our dioramas, then went inside to get to work.  Click on the pictures to view them larger.


Cole chose elephants and their habitat.

He glued dead clumps of grass to the bottom for their floor, made a watering hole, had some large pieces of mulch for food, and used an assortment of branches, leaves, and weeds to make the trees and foliage.  Cole's diorama had enough room for the entire elephant family - if you look closely you can see the calf in the back (taking a nap on the bed Cole made him).


Kara started out with desert animals and ended up making a desert oasis.

Kara's is a little harder to see, but she used brown paper for the ground and sprinkled gold glitter on it for sand glistening in the sun (props to Mark for that cool idea).  She had branches and sticks for the animals to lounge on, a lone tree in her desert, and an assortment of desert animals (spiders, snakes, lizards).  Apparently it was a desert in Australia because there was also a wombat and a dingo.  


It was a little messy and not what we had planned on doing that day, but it was fun and the kids asked us to make another one the next day!