The Hall of the Bulls is a large hall inside Lascaux Cave. Massive drawings of bulls, some 18 feet long, stampede along the walls.

​ABOUT LASCAUX CAVE
In 1940 a cave was discovered by teenage boys in southwest France. When they entered the cave, they were surrounded by paintings on the walls and ceilings.

The paintings are estimated to be 17,000 years old. Most of these prehistoric paintings are of large animals, such as horses, cattle and bison, and were painted with black, red and yellow mineral pigments.

The Stone Age people were able to see in the cave with the use of lamps made out of stone. Over 100 prehistoric lamps have been found in Lascaux Cave.

We recreated the look of these stone walls by creating texture and using tones that may have been found on its surface.

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ABOUT CAVE OF THE HANDS
Located in Santa Cruz, Argentina, Cave of the Hands is known for the hundreds of red, white, purple, yellow and brown hands stenciled on the walls. It’s believed that the hand art dates back to around 5,000 B.C. The prehistoric people used mineral pigments to make their prints on the cave walls.

A few years ago I visited the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History in DC and got to see a replica of a cave painting upclose! Today the kiddos and I had loads of fun creating our own handprints and imagining what it would’ve been like to live loooooooong ago, using mineral pigments to print our hands on the walls of our cave homes!

With their long tusks and shaggy fur, woolly mammoths were unique animals that lived during Prehistoric times. With the popularity of the movie Ice Age, I was inspired to use a woolly mammoth for this lesson on texture, line and space.

ABOUT WOOLLY MAMMOTHS
The woolly mammoth is an extinct species of the elephant. They were about the same size as the modern African elephant. Woolly mammoths were covered in fur so they were prepared for cold, especially during the last ice age. Their long tusks were useful for fighting and foraging.

Woolly mammoths lived at the same time as early humans. It is theorized that they became extinct because of habitat and climate changes and being hunted by people.
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Fun fact: A newborn woolly mammoth calf weighs about 200 pounds!

ABOUT STONEHENGE
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument located in England that was likely built between 3000 and 1520 BC. It is made of stones that are each about 13 feet hight and 7 feet wide. The stones are arranged in an inner and outer circle.
Each stone weighs around 25 tons, which is as much as two school buses! No one knows how the Neolithic people moved the huge stones to the area or how they were able to arrange them in the post-and-lintel construction.

Another mystery is why Stonehenge was built. Some theories are that it was a burial ground, religious place or used for predicting when the seasons would change. What do you think?

Our art piece today is smaller than our typical size and this means the kids had to adjust the scale of their drawings accordingly. They used watercolours to complete this simple but striking rendition of one of history’s great wonders!