Last Day of School!
School is officially over in our district, but our school, along with 2 others have to make up one day due to an earlier power outage. Our principal has planned a fun day for the kids and of course I had to plan some kind of party that included me baking something for the kids. We are having a hot dog party in honor of our Mo Willems author study(including watermelon, chips and my famous homemade sugar cookies). After reading Franki’s blog about Mo’s new DVD (which I asked our media specialist to buy), I couldn’t resist weaving Mo into our last week of school. He’s been a favorite all year. The kids have loved reading about the antics of Pigeon and the Piggie and Elephant books have given my readers a boost as they realize they can read these books all by themselves. We made a chart comparing his books and their thinking amazed me. When we charted the characters to Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Mason said, “We are the characters too.” (I was secretly hoping someone would mention that). When I asked him to explain he said, “The pigeon and the bus driver keep talking to us in the book. That means we are in the book too.” Wow!
Mo gave my students inspiration for illustrating some of their books based on Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle BunnyToo. Many students found pictures in magazines to glue into their books and then drew more scenery in the background. They also wrote a class book entitled, Don’t Let the Pigeon… where they came up with their own ideas of the catastrophes the pigeon would cause if allowed to do certain things.
I”m sorry that we only had a week to focus on this study, but it gives me lots of ideas for next year. One thing I want to try for sure is to give kids digital cameras so they can illustrate their books more like Mo Willems did in Knuffle Bunny. I can only imagine what they will come up with. It’s as I believe…give kids the opportunity to read, write, and talk about what they notice, and they will come up with ideas that I never would have thought about! They are remarkable!!
