Imaginary Creature Paintings

This lesson was inspired by the children's book "The Zlooksh" by French-Canadian author Dominique Demers. In the early 2000's, this book was distributed free to 500,00 Grade 1 students across Canada by a National bank. Many of my older students remembered reading this book as a child (God, makes me feel old!)

The Zlooksh is a charming story about a young boy named Zachary who, when asked by his teacher to draw a picture of his favourite animal, uses his imagination to create an animal that can't be found anywhere.(source)

After reading the book to my Grade 2 students, they were challenged to draw their own imaginary animal and come up with a name for it. They drew it on 12 x 18" white paper, then outlined everything in Sharpie.

Once outlined, they painted it using handy-dandy tempera pucks.

It was really fun watching what they came up with!

Once dry, they 'bubble cut' around it and also cut out the name and glued it 

somewhere on their creature.

Here are some of their imaginary creatures :)