Kindergartners can create zoo animal masks from paper plates. Cut eye holes out of paper plates and distribute the plates, as well as a variety of art supplies, including crayons, markers, construction paper, yarn, scissors and glue. Encourage students to pick an animal to create and then to use the materials you have provided to transform their paper plates into the animal's face. For a zebra, a child can make draw black and white stripes on a paper plate and cut out ears from construction paper. For a lion, a child may color a plate brown and glue pieces of yarn around the perimeter, creating a mane. When complete, have kids glue craft sticks to the bottom of their plates and hold the masks up to their faces. Students can use the completed masks to pretend they are animals in a zoo.
Make whimsical monkeys from pipe cleaners. Show children how to bend a pipe cleaner, forming a U-shape and then glue the bent pipe cleaner and a straight pipe cleaner between two craft pom-poms; the bent pipe cleaner will be the legs of the monkey, the straight pipe cleaner will be the arms, and the pom-poms will be the body. Have children glue another pom-pom on top of the first two, creating a head for the monkey. They can glue googly eyes onto the monkey's head and another pipe cleaner onto the back, creating a tail.
Turn ordinary cats into leopards with this craft. Print out black-line images of cats and distribute them to students. Instruct children to color the cats yellow, cut them out and then glue them onto a piece of paper. Provide students with black finger paint and instruct them to dip their fingers into the paint and press them onto the cat images, creating leopard spots. Children can further embellish their pictures by using crayons to draw a background behind the leopards.
Use children's footprints for a penguin craft. Have children trace one foot (with a shoe on) two times on a piece of black construction paper and one time on a piece of white construction paper. Instruct kids to cut out all of their footprints. Glue the two black footprints onto a piece of paper so that they slightly overlap; these will be the wings of the penguin. Glue the white footprint in the center of the two black footprints, creating the penguin's body. From orange paper, have children cut out two bird feet and glue them to the bottom of their penguins. To complete the craft, kids can use a black crayon to draw a triangle as a nose and glue on two googly eyes.