It’s Week 2 of Summer Fun Camp, can you believe it?! It’s finally here! We had SO MUCH FUN during our first week of camp, and lots of wonderful photos of campers making their crafts! In case you missed any of the fun, go HERE for a full recap of our awesome camping adventure!
Also be sure to stop by our website and Facebook page to keep up with all the fun!
Me and my crafty friends are very excited to bring you some fun Zoo-themed crafts and activities this week! Let’s get right to it, shall we?
Today I’m going to show you how my daughter made this insanely cute DIY Fingerprint Zoo! We had so much fun playing with paint and creating little animals, and I hope you will, too! There are a ton of photos, so consider yourself warned!
First, grab your supplies. For the Fingerprint Zoo, you’ll need:
- White paper (copy paper works great)
- Paints in lots of fun colors (we used acrylics)
- A pencil and a pen
- Scotch tape (shown below)
- YOUR HANDS! Well, your fingers, anyway…
Lay out 4 sheets of paper and tape them together to make a big piece of paper, creating a:
Now, depending on the age of your child, you might have to help with this part. My daughter is 11 and drew our zoo on her own. Using a pencil, draw your zoo! Make areas for all the different animals you want to include.
Marley drew the zoo, including enclosures for the animals, a stream, bridges, and a picnic area, in pencil first.
Once she was satisfied with her outline, we traced over the pencil with a black felt tip pen. Be careful if you erase the pencil lines, making sure not to smudge the pen.
Now it’s time to draw your animals!
A couple of notes first:
* I highly recommend practicing on scrap paper first.
* You will have to do the bodies with paint, then allow them to dry before adding features, like legs and faces. We used acrylic paint, which took about 30 minutes to dry.
Giraffe: Use your thumb to make his body and head. Use the side of your pinky to make his long neck. Dab a bit of orange and brown on a pencil eraser to make the spots. Also use the edge of the pencil eraser to make the tail and horns.
After the paint dries, add legs and faces. 🙂 We made a momma and baby giraffe!
Flamingos: Use your thumb to make the body, then slightly above and to one side of the body, use your pinky to make the head.
After the paint dries, add legs, neck and a beak. We made some flamingos with one leg folded, just like in real life!
Turtles: Use your thumb and smear it a little to make it big and fat for the turtle shell.
After the paint dries, add legs and a head. We used our handy pencil eraser to make fish, too!
Marley added an anaconda snake to our zoo using her pinky. (Check out all the paint colors on her hand. We had fun but this is a messy craft!)
Marley took a step back to examine her work. When she decided she had all the animals, we took a break to let the paint dry.
As you can see, it looks a little funny before you add legs and faces. It’s just blobs of paint for the most part.
After the paint dried, we added the legs and such to the animals, then used our crayons to completely decorate our zoo. Here is the finished result!
Isn’t it fabulous! Marley did such a great job making her zoo! We added a few people, a clown handing out balloons, a picnic area, and an entrance and exit. Let me give you the grand tour…
Our first enclosure upon entering the zoo is the Lion Den! We have two not-so-ferocious lions, male and female. “Roar!”
Just a few steps down the path is our Bird Aviary! Here we have a variety of exotic birds (we used our pencil eraser to make these cute little fellas).
Across from our Aviary, we have our little Turtle couple relaxing in the cool water with some seriously cute fish friends!
Continue down our path, sharing the pond with the turtles and fish, we have our fun Flamingo friends! One of them has bed head apparently.
Take a break from the heat and step inside our Reptile House! Here we have a variety of slithery friends in all shapes and sizes!
If you aren’t too afraid, stop by and visit our Anaconda! He’s HUGE!!
As we exit the Reptile House, we loop around to see some GIANT friends! Mr. Elephant appears to be cooling himself by spraying water from his pond out of his trunk! Momma and Baby Giraffe enjoy the shade of a tall tree.
Finish the loop around the zoo with a visit to the Monkey enclosure! We have a big fat poppa gorilla and two small monkeys! Behind the monkeys is the Tiger family! Grab a balloon from the crazy clown dude on your way to see the Bears! Don’t feed them, though! They really like picnic baskets!
Thank you so much for visiting Marley Moo’s Zoo today! We hope you enjoyed your visit and we hope you’ll visit again soon!
I’d like to give a big THANK YOU to this week’s sponsor, The Hair Bow Company! Offering way more goodies than just hair bows, The Hair Bow Company provides craft supplies, tutus, accessories to create your own hair bows, and more!
Enter to win a $30 gift certificate from The Hair Bow Company! And be sure to stop by The Grant Life tomorrow to see what Kelley has to share! Happy Camping!!
Linking up:
Craft-O-Maniac, On Display Monday
19 Responses
I LOVE the fingerprint zoo! Too cute! 🙂
Great job on the fingerprint zoo…I love the creative animals you came up with…so cute.
So cute! I love the anaconda! We went to the zoo today and they had a giant snake hanging out in the grass. The kids thought it was great. I stayed as far away as possible. Lol. Great job on your zoo!!
Awesome job, Marley!
So cute! Way to go Marley!!! I am loving this summer camp. I wanted to do with my kids but with moving it would have been hard!! Hopefully the next one 😉
Soo cute..my 11 and 9 yr old could do this for some much needed down time!! Great job girls! Lisa
SOOOOO awesome!!! Nice job Marley!!!!!
Thanks girl! She worked so hard on it and I’ve already decided to frame it and hang it in my craft room. 🙂
Thanks Kat! We had a lot of fun making them!
Marley was so funny when she made that anaconda! She drew the little stick figure next to it, then got the giggles for 20 minutes about just how big she made the snake! It’s her favorite 🙂
Thank you!!!
Thanks Monica! The good thing is, you can go to the Summer Fun Camp blog and get all the links to all the crafts any time! It’s always available so hop in when you have time!
Thanks Lisa! Marley is 11 and had an absolute blast creating her zoo!
Thank you sweetie! XOXO
Great ideas! Wished I known such ideas when my son and his friends were young. Thanks for sharing. Nancy
What a cute idea! I know a couple little ones that might enjoy this! 🙂
~Kim
Thanks for stopping by Nancy!
Thank you Kim! We had such a great time making our zoo 🙂 If you make one, I’d love to see pics!