Papier-Mâché Animals: An Integrating Theme for Elementary Classrooms

One of the biggest present challenges for teachers, especially in primary classrooms, is the need to address the content standards in all subject areas with the same amount of instructional time. While curriculum integration continues to be a powerful strategy to meet this challenge, teachers often find it difficult to bridge the gap between theoretical models of integration and classroom implementation. In this article, we describe how to implement an integrated science lesson founded upon four guiding principles: (a) Use of the 5-E instructional model, (b) adherence to the National Science Education Content Standards, (c) utilization of developmentally appropriate practices for young children, and (d) incorporation of the project approach to motivate learning and integrate different subjects. Specifically, this article describes how to employ papier-mâché animals as a unifying theme in primary classrooms to integrate science, language arts, and visual arts to allow for overlapping adherence to content standards. Traditionally, many teachers have popularized the inclusion of papier-mâché art projects in thei