Buffalo Painting with Buffalo Before Breakfast

Buffalos and the great plains are in this Magic Tree House book activity. You can learn about buffalo, the Lakota, and other plains animals.

The Buffalo painting is a great way to bring out the buffalo part of the book. These are just a few simple steps to make this buffalo painting fun for kids.

Buffalo Painting with Buffalo at Breakfast - A great activity to go with the book or any great plains theme that learns about the buffalo - 3Dinosaurs.com

The Buffalo Painting is a great addition to the Magic Tree House Activities on the site.

We have included links to some of the products and resources we have used with this activity. If you purchase via the links we may earn a small commission.

Magic Tree House Book: Buffalo Before Breakfast

The Book Buffalo Before Breakfast is number 18 in the Magic Tree House books.

This set of books Jack and Annie are in the great plains. They are still collection items. And the Lakota and buffalo are a huge part of it. And learn why buffalo should be call bison in the book as well.

And doing this buffalo painting with the book is a great way to remember parts of the book.

What we used to make the Buffalo Painting

How we made the Buffalo Painting

You will see the steps below for painting the background and putting the buffalo on the painting.

Paint Just Water on the Watercolor Paper

You can do this step or skip it. But we start with painting some water on the watercolor paper. This helps the painting go much faster and it works wonders on watercolor paper.

Paint a Light Blue Line on the Paper

You want to paint a light blue line on the paper. Or just a blue line. This will mark the different between the sky and the grass of the plains.

Paint Light Blue to Dark Blue

The next step we did was to paint the sky blue. You want to have a light at the grass light and go to the darker blue at the top of the paper.

You can see we use a lot of the blue colors for this. But let kids paint the sky how they want. You can even use the book for refence for the sky colors.

If you have younger kids doing this activity, you can just have them paint the sky blue.

Painting the Grass on the Plains

You then want to use vertical lines to make the grass on the plains. This makes the grass feel for the plains. You can use just brown or use a mix of brown and yellow for the grass. Kids can look at the book for what the grass looked like.

You can just paint a few grass lines to fill the bottom of the paper like you see below. It is a simple and easy lines with no fuss.

Or you can fill in the whole paper with grass painted lines. Remember this can be how the child wants to do it not always how you want to do it.

Place the Buffalo Cookie Cutter on the Paper

The next step would be to paint the buffalo on the plains grass. You place the buffalo cookie cutter where you want. You can hold the outside of the cookie cutter or the top of the cookie cutter. You can do what works best for the child doing the painting.

Use a Q-Tip or Cotton Swab to Paint the Buffalo

After you have the buffalo wher eyou want it on the paper. You use a cotton swab and brown paint to paint inside the cookie cutter. The cotton swab makes it easier to get into he small parts of the buffalo cookie cutter.

They can do as much paint as they want inside the cookie cutter.

Lift Off the Buffalo Cookie Cutter

After you have finish painting. You lift off the cookie cutter to see the buffalo on the paper.

Depending on the age of the kids doing this buffalo art project, they can do touch ups on the buffalo when they are done. I suggest this only for older kids.

Repeat the steps above for the buffalo painting

After you finish the first buffalo you can repeat the steps above for as many buffalo as they want to put on a paper. Remember if they want to do one buffalo that is fine. If they want to put only half a buffalo on the paper that is fine.