Travel to the Sahara Desert! (K-2nd Grade)

This busy second grade artist drew the sidewinder, the scarab beetle,
and the ostrich!

Today in Mind Move Make class we went on an adventure to the Sahara Desert!  Before our journey into the desert began, I asked the students what they already knew about the desert.  Almost everyone in the class was eager to tell share a piece of information about an animal, plant, or the terrain of the desert with everyone in class.  Their knowledge was impressive!

After our discussion, we began our movement-centered travels through the Sahara Desert!  I held up pictures of each animal we met during this imaginary trip so that the students had a visual image as some of the animals are a bit more obscure.  We started off riding a camel over the sand dunes using cat-cow to simulate both the camel's hump and the very bumpy business of riding on a camel's back.  Our cat-cows started slowly and got faster and faster as we moved over the rolling hills of sand!  After that we encountered a scarab beetle and entered child's pose.  Then a sidewinder snake slithered along and all the children hissed in cobra pose, breathing in as they came off the floor and making their best snake noise as they lowered their torsos back to the ground.  Several other animals showed up during our adventure: a jerboa and a dorcas gazelle.  My favorite part of this particular adventure was when each student became an ostrich!  We used Lord of the Dance pose (Natarajasana) to simulate this animal.  Our long arm became the ostrich's neck, our hand became the head.  Ostriches have very powerful legs; their kick is their greatest defense!  So we kicked up our legs to celebrate the beautiful strength of this animal!  Here is a link to more information about each animal that we looked at from the Sahara Desert, if you're interested in learning more.

When our adventure came to an end, we were ready to create artwork!  I explained that this was an art catch-up day.  Some students hadn't yet finished their rainforest artworks, so a few people worked on that.  Some students wanted to spend more time on their hybrid creature drawings from our last class.  Those who were finished with everything got to draw one of the desert animals as a practice study for a painting we will begin next class!  Many of the drawings are beautiful renderings of the animals we encountered in our imaginations.

A second grade artist drawing the dorcas gazelle

A kindergarten artist drawing the camel