Before I write about that lesson though, I need to share the last lesson I did with last year's littlest boys and girls.
It was simple, but some of the work the kids turned in was hilarious. I love Mo Willems. I LOVE his books. They are a reading staple at the Masse-Brown household. In fact, the first book my little guy read all by himself was a Piggie and Elephant book:) I digress though...
I read a couple of the Pigeon books to the kinder classes at the end of the year and students did a drawing of the pigeon and wrote a sentence to go along with it.
We looked at how Mo drew the different parts of the pigeon and identified shapes like circles, rectangles, and triangles. We also looked at how Mo made pigeon's legs in different scenes. The bird was running, sitting, walking, or standing throughout the books.
We drew out our birds together, added a speech bubble, and wrote the beginning of our sentence together (Don't let the pigeon...). I called on kids before we completed the sentence to verbally finish the sentence, so they could model for each other. Students then wrote what they didn't want the pigeon doing in their picture.
Students then could add details that gave the viewer a visual of what the pigeon wasn't supposed to do, and we added a ground line as well.
Students then traced the outlines and colored the image.
Pretty straightforward, but it was a fun way to wrap up the year with them:)
Hey Mo- thanks for inspiring young (and older) readers and artists with your work!