Students can focus on the gorilla's face by creating masks to wear or display. Sheet foam cut into shapes and layered can make a soft, adaptable mask. For cardboard masks, students can add recycled buttons, yarn, felt and other materials to enhance their gorilla masks.
Students can view a DVD on gorillas and their environment. Pausing the DVD player will allow students to note details and make quick sketches of the gorilla's physical characteristics. Students can draw realistic representations of the gorilla on one half of a sheet of paper On the other half sheet, students can draw a gorilla from their imagination. The second gorilla could even look comfortably adapted to city life.
Students can create a mural depicting the gorilla's habitat. Using crayons, colored pencils, paints or cut paper, students can include a landscape or use a motif such as a leaf or fruit associated with the gorilla's diet or environment. Paper gorillas or gorilla masks can populate the mural.
Students can listen to accounts of Koko, the gorilla who achieved a working vocabulary in American Sign Language. Students can make hand puppets to celebrate Koko's life and then learn some signs that Koko knew.