We Rock Cave Art

The craziest thing I ever did in my art room was to make a cave. Why you ask? Because I wasn't gonna crawl under the table. Some of you know where I'm going with this and some of you will just need to keep reading. 
I read an article about art teachers trying to give students the whole Michelangelo experience by having them lie on the floor and do artwork on the bottom of their tables. This gal was not up to the task. Soooooo I went with prehistoric cave painting!

 

 I pulled my cabinets away from the wall and draped fabric from the ceiling to the top of the cabinets. AND I fire proofed all of that fabric before using it.  (I used a spray bottle and spread all the fabric out over my fence.) You can see the entrance to the cave to the very right of the photograph.

One of the classroom teachers suggested we learn about and draw endangered animals in the cave.

Brilliant! I have the book How to Draw 101 Animals, I picked different animals for each grade level to have variety and I had each of the children do a practice drawing before we went into the cave.

 

Since I am all about tying literature into my art program, I brought each class of students into the "cave" and read them the book The Cave Painter of Lascaux by Roberta Angeletti. It was wonderful and so much fun. Students talked about that corner in the room for years afterwards remembering that lesson. 

In the cave I taped up paper for the students to do their art. They worked in oil pastels. Here's some close-ups, And, yes, the penguin was drawn upside down.

 

 

Here is the display I put up in our gallery The Den of Art:

       

This also worked out really well for the for the County Fair as the theme that year was "We Rock". Soooooo

 

I used the practice animals that the students made for the display. Cutting out the animals in circles to make it look like a flash light was shining into the cave on to the art.
What's the craziest lesson you ever did with your students?
Thanks for reading!