How to Create Clay Animals

Everyone can enjoy their time with their kids using simple crafts. Kids love modeling clay, and they have fun using their imaginations. Make a clay animal menagerie with your kids as a fun activity or to help teach them about nature and science.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Newspaper
• Clay
• Clay-shaping tools
• Paint or enamel

1. Choose an animal. Get pictures of the animal and study its appearance. Make the newspaper into a hump a little bit smaller than the body of the animal and roll out some clay into a thin, flat sheet. Place the sheet of clay over the newspaper hump.

2. Roll a piece of clay into a ball and shape the face of the animal using your fingers, fingernails and your clay-shaping tools. Include eyes, ears, a mouth, antennae or any other features your animal has.

3. Make coils of clay and form them into legs for your animal. It's easiest to keep your animal in a lying-down position so you don't have to balance the animal or make the legs hold the body of the animal upright.

4. Add detail to your animal's body with your tools. Add claws and fur, if needed. Give its skin texture, if it doesn't have hair. Add personality to your animal. Pose it so it's yawning, hunting or investigating something. Let the clay dry and harden.

5. Paint your clay animal, or coat it in enamel to preserve it. Display it somewhere in your home, and periodically remind your kids of the things they learned about it.

Tips & Warnings

• Move your animal carefully so it doesn't fall apart. Sometimes the clay dries more brittle than hard. The paint or enamel coating helps, but it doesn't take care of it entirely.