Seasonal Squirrel Sensation

Autumn is settling in and it’s brought the outside into the classroom.  Watching the squirrels in my garden, I decided that we should appreciate this frequent garden visitor, living in our urban jungle.

We opened the lesson with a poem “Squirrel” from “A First Book of Nature”, illustrated vibrantly by Mark Hearld.

We chatted about the faithful friend of our London spaces, the squirrel, who is busily burying her nuts for the forthcoming frozen winter months.  Seeds are falling, leaves are littering the parks and pavements and we wanted to express our appreciation of our small, busy friends.

We started off colouring in a coffee filter using regular felt tips, from a selection of Autumn colours.  We coloured in spots, then we painted water over the whole piece and left it to dry.

The results were majestic reflections of the autumn shades of leaves.  They’re going to make beautiful tales later on…so we put them to one side for now…

We used cardboard stencils, scissors and pencils to make the body from orange card.  We had to make folds along the arms and legs, so our squirrels’ can stand up.  Some had fluffy tummies!

 To decorate we used pastels, which achieve a beautiful soft, smudgy look for our fluffy friends.

The best way to draw the face, was to use oil pastel, which can go over the chalky pastel base.  This was symmetrical, with a fold down the centre, then stuck on both sides to the body piece.

Feathering the tail enhanced the lightness and shape.  To make this effect, small snips were made around the circumference of the tail, before it was joined to the body using PVA glue.

Ta-dah!  Some wonderful woodland friends!