Preschool students practice putting shapes together to make pictures by using cut-out hearts to build a koala bear. Provide your students with one medium-sized heart, four small-sized hearts and one large-sized heart. The large heart, upside down, is the koala's body. The medium heart, right side up, is the koala's head, and the small hearts glued to the top of the head are the ears. Two more small hearts at the bottom of the body are the feet, and students can draw in arms and facial features with crayons.
During a preschool unit on koala bears or Australia, make some koala bear masks with your students. Eye and mouth holes cut into a paper plate are the base of the mask. Punch a hole on each side and tie string through each so you can tie the masks behind the children's heads. Give them fake fur from a craft or fabric store to cut fuzzy ears from, and black construction paper to cut a large, oval nose out of.
Teach your preschool class about print making and koala bears with this project. Give each student a square cut from a foam tray. Have them use a dull pencil to draw a simple koala bear. One way to do this is to draw a koala bear on the blackboard, taking it step-by-step as your students fall along. Once the koala is drawn, have students paint over it with poster paint. Now they can press a piece of paper into the paint to make a print.
Students can design their own koala bear habitat using felt. Glue a piece of brown felt to a cardboard square for each student to use as a background. Provide them with eucalyptus leaves and branches made from brown and green felt, with felt sections of light brown and gray for koala bears, as well as colorful felt sections for birds and flowers, and you can even make a blue sky and some clouds. Let them choose a few of each and stick the felt sections to their cardboard squares. Felt will stick to itself so you do not need to use glue, but for long-term wear, you can attach a piece of fabric fastener between the back of the felt section or you can add a few drops of fabric glue to attach these pieces to the felt square.