Lion Mask

The Virtual Book Club for Kids author of the month is Marcus Pfister. We enjoyed reading many of the awesome books he has written. One of my favorite Marcus Pfister books is How Leo Learned to  be King. I always read it to my kindergartners in the classroom, and we’ve read it a number of times for our home preschool activities. Last year when we learned about the animals of Africa we read the story and made a lion mask for each child. They were great for both pretend play and role playing social skills related to the story.

FIND EVEN MORE AFRICA THEME ACTIVITIES IN OUR PRINTABLE AFRICAN ANIMAL LESSON PLANS.

About How Leo Learned to Be King

In the story Leo the lion king is not a very kind ruler. Soon the animals of the savanna have had enough and they banish him. During this time Leo learns what it really means to be a leader. This book is great for talking about cooperation and consideration.

Lion Mask Craft

To make our lion masks I cut the center hole out of a paper plate. I set those paper plates out with strips of paper approximately 1/2 inch by 3 inches in orange, brown, and yellow.

The kids glued the paper strips around the circle leaving an open whole for their faces.

Then we added a little fine motor practice by rolling the ends of the paper. We used crayons and the kids curled the bottom half of the paper around the edges. This takes a bit of time so the kids may want to take a break instead of doing all of the curling in one sitting.

But they’ll be delighted with the finished lion masks. We used ours for pretend play and singing lion songs during our Africa theme. And there were definitely a lot of very loud, “Rooooaaarrrs!”

You can also use the masks as a way to act out social situations related to cooperation and consideration. One child might be the lion and the others might be the animals in the story. You could focus on specific examples from the story or use the opportunity to role play about things happening in the classroom or at home (like sharing toys, taking crayons, helping a friend, etc).