This summer my little AJ became obsessed with Mo Willems and all his books. So of course as the mommy teacher I am, I went to the library and got any book I could find by Mo Willems. This is how my love affair with Mr. Willems began. We followed him on Twitter and learned how he was both an author and illustrator. I found that AJ was able to read most of the Elephant and Piggie books herself and this was boosting her confidence as a reader. She also started trying to draw the characters. We became frequent vistors of MoWillems.com and Pigeon Presents. Needless to say her obession became mine.
When planning for this school year I decided Mo (I can call him that now since I follow him on Twitter and all) would be our September author. To introduce my kids to Mo I started with this simple craft.
(picture to be added later, it's on my home computer)
We painted paper plates gray, added googlie eyes, and big ears to make our own Geralds. All month we read his books and used them to identify characters, settting and other reading skills from Treasures. We also learned to draw The Pigeon and other characters. Well, can I just tell you that now 1B LOVES Mo, too! I get families of drawn pigeons almost daily. Once we finished a "Mo book" I put it in a bin for "book shopping" before Daily 5 Read to Self and they are fought over by my firsties. To drill home character, setting and sequence we made a story elements display for our hallway. I put the kids in groups according to their favorite story and assigned one person to be in charge of each element. I think they came out AWESOME! You can see some of our Gerald plates along the right side.
Lastly we made class books based on the titles we read in class. Here are some of what my kiddos came up with. I used this lesson to assess how they were doing with writing sentences and what we need to review. I contemplated having the kids edit these, but decided since this our first "book" I would leave them just like so. I have photocopied them though and plan to have the photocopies edited as morning work. If you would like to use these printables please feel free. Class Book Pages On their own they are nothing special but once the kids put their spin on them I think they turn out great.
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| I love how Gerald is doing a flip! |
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| How fun would it be to play tag with Pigeon! |
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| Can you tell we just talked about labeling? I think discussing in Writer's Workshop and Treasures helped drill it in! |
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| This little guy underlined banana because he remembered just keep writing not focus on spelling. Love it! |
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| Gerald's eyebrows crack me up! He really looks mad! |
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| I believe these characters have actually become part of our class! |
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| I wonder how many Knuffle Bunnies will be on Christmas lists |
I, of course had to join in the fun and made my own page. :)
I am desperately trying to get HR's first grade classes tickets to see Knuffle Bunny at the Kennedy Center. Sadly, all they have available at the moment is 19 seats... so I put us on the waiting list for 50 :/, say a prayer for us. I am sure seeing Knuffle Bunny the Musical would be an awesome surprise!
