Characters In Costume

So I was looking at one of my all-time favorite sites for ideas: byrdseed.com . Ian comes up with some very thought-provoking activities, and even though it's typically geared toward older kids; I can often adapt an activity down for my kiddos.

This one was about what costume a character might choose to wear based on their personality traits, accomplishments, etc. When I first read it, I thought what a creative way to incorporate deeper thinking about the characters and the choices they make. I sent it to my sister who teaches literature on a college level, to see if she could use it. It was too deep for my kiddos....or was it? We are reading the Wizard of Oz (yes, still!). We've gotten to know those characters pretty well. I wonder if some of my munchkins were up to the challenge. 

And they were....

I think this one wanted a few brownie points....:)

My favorite...they can be so clever!

Painting Like Magritte

We tried our hand at painting like surrealists today! We try out the styles of many artists throughout the year, and I've never done Magritte with them before. I found this book:

Which has really cool transperancy overlays in its illustrations depicting some of Magritte's famous details. We looked at some of his famous paintings and I asked the kids to try their hand at some surreal works of art:

A little Kafka-esque, don't you think?

Now that would be surreal!

Green sky and blue grass

 

Character Campaign Posters

So I was thinking about how to talk about the upcoming election with my kiddos. They know who our President is, but this will be the first time they've seen an actual election take place in their lives. I'm still not sure they really understand what's going on (one of my munchkins described the debate as 2 guys both talking over each other and neither making any sense :).

We've read about the adventures of some good characters this year. The question was, if Skippyjon Jones, Clifford, Max from Where the Wild Things Are and Ladybug Girl were all in the running for President, who deserves to win. The kids made campaign posters for their choice and wrote why that candidate was the best. As in real life, the girl didn't get any votes (boo!)-the frontrunner definitely seemed to be SkippyJon Jones. Here are the posters they made:

We talked about what campaigning meant-even kissing babies! :)

The Cutest Book

I've been going to the library every other weekend to look for books to use with my kiddos. We moved into a new school building this past year and I packed up all my books and took most of them home. Unfortunately, I'm the worst packer in the universe-I didn't label the boxes and I didn't really pack them like I should have, by seasons or by themes. So I have books I want to use, I just can't find them without a search party helping me. :)

Anyway, I digress. I found a book by the notorious Mo Willems-which alone would have sparked the interest of my Munchkins. But the story is just so cute.

My kids loved the wordplay-he's not "terrible" like mean, he's "terrible" because he stinks at being a monster because he doesn't scare people. I don't have any good activities for it yet, but wanted to share my find. If you do a monster unit in October like I do, it's a good addition to it.

Wild Thing Ethics

In continuing with one of my all-time favorite read-alouds, Where the Wild Things Are, the students wrote about whether it was right or wrong that Max left the Wild Things and why. Here's what they came up with: