We have had a lot of owl projects lately as they are easy to draw and lend themselves to a lot of techniques. We did screech owls tonight and painted them with palette knives using Basis paints with cornstarch added to give it a bit more texture. This group does so well, even the littlest ones. Gets a lot of moms drawing too.
Last night we did a drawing and painting project with penguins. At first I had planned a straight nature theme of a penguin family but that held no excitement even for me yesterday. Then I thought, why not have them being playful in the winter dressed up in caps and scarves? The kids spent almost 20 minutes drawing the 2 penguins. we talked about wing position to throw snowballs or ski or other activities and adjusted. Then we painted them. Lesson learned--washable black tempera is not black, it is green..grrr. Some of the kids got into spreading their paints around--"they are in an ice storm" some got excited about the colors (think pumpkin head instead of just a beak) Lots of talk about what was going on in their pictures. One of the penguins is even speed skating--you can tell who wants to be at practice.
Not your usual groundhog project! 
Using 1/4 page of construction paper we drew a fat little groundhog and then glued the 2 sides together with a stick in the middle. 
