It’s All in the Details

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

I remember my high school biology teacher years ago assigning each of us a square yard of ground near the football field. We were to record every bit of life we could find.  We expected the assignment to take no time at all since most of our patches were little more than scruffy dirt. Or were they? Look at that blade of grass. And is that an almost microscopic bug climbing up the dandelion?  There was life in that square if we looked closely. 

It’s all in the details.

Details are key to colorful, descriptive writing and illustrating, as in the picture book Prairie Dog Song by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore (Lee and Low, 2016).  Prairie dog tunnels “connect to a maze of rooms. Some rooms are for listening for predators, enemies that eat prairie dogs. Other rooms are used for sleeping, storing food, and raising playful prairie dog pups. Another room is a toilet area.”

The story of the prairie dog ecosystem is also told in verse, written to the tune of the old folk song, “The Green Grass Grows All Around.”

“And down those holes

Lived prairie dogs,

With the friskiest pups

That you ever did see.

Yes, the prairie dogs built

Their homes in the ground.

And the grasses waved

All around, all around,

And the grasses waved all around.”

Spring is a perfect time of year to take advantage of writing prompts suggested by nature.  Susan Roth and Cindy Trumbore traveled to New Mexico because, said Susan, “we both HAD to see the real prairie dogs and the grasses and the skies in the west.” Take children outside so they can see the real animals and grasses and skies - and provide several optional writing or drawing prompts.

·       We think grass is green – just like the folk song.  But look at the blades of grass in Prairie Dog Song. Illustrator Susan L. Roth thinks she may have cut fifty billion blades of grass for her collages! And they are brown, yellow, reddish and many shades of green. Look at real grass or real leaves: draw and color all the different shades and shapes you see. 

·       Write a paragraph about a patch of grass or woodland. Describe everything you see in detail so that a reader can truly imagine its colors, shapes and movement.

·       Imagine and write a story about a shape in the clouds.

·       Take a photograph or draw a bug or a flower. Try to identify it through good Internet or library research and write a paragraph about your find.  Add colorful details to your photo or drawing.  Speaking of details, did you know Susan Roth glued freshly ground coffee on the buffalo to make its rich brown fur look matted? 

·       In Prairie Dog Song, ferrets are predators and prairie dogs are prey.  What are some predators and prey you can see where you are sitting or walking outside?  Write a paragraph from the point of view of the prey. What could you do to escape or hide?

·       Write lyrics about what you see outdoors using the rhyming pattern and rhythm of a simple, favorite song. This could be a good project for a whole class, with everyone offering details for the lyrics and then singing together at the end. “And the grasses waved/All around, all around/And the grasses waved all around.” 

https://childrensbookguild.org/karen-leggett-abouraya

MAKING THE MOST OF A FIELD TRIP

by Karen Leggett Abouraya

This week I’m sharing a book for you – the grown-ups – because it is filled with such good ideas for writing and learning.  When Uma Krishnaswami wasn’t busy writing her own children’s books, she wrote Beyond the Field Trip: Teaching and Learning in Public Places.

Uma wants students to be “actively engaged as learners, framing questions and working toward greater levels of understanding,” whether they are visiting a museum, a park or just the center of town. 

She recommends planning backwards.

“Figure out what the ultimate product of the study will be. Then work back to find all the activities you will need to use to get there. What you are doing is building bridges between what students know already, and what you anticipate they will know when you have completed the sequence of activities. The place you visit is one ingredient in this process. The visit is not in itself the objective.”

Let’s start with one of Uma’s own picture books, Out of the Way! Out of the Way! about a tree whose role and importance in the center of a village changes as the village becomes crowded, people age, roads are built and everyone is in a hurry.

For one old man, the tree reminds him of stories his father and mother and grandfather told him long ago.

“Even today, those stories are told and retold,

as the traffic rattles past

going from here to there and back again.

But sometimes the drivers of cards

and buses and trucks

and vans and tractors

                              Stop and stay a while…

                                                            and listen.”

So after you’ve all read Out of the Way, have the children think about their own town or neighborhood.  Ask them to write about or draw something that has changed – a new building, a different store, a new park. Ask the students to write some questions they could ask people who lived in the neighborhood before these changes.

Make a plan to visit a park, the library or even a nearby mall. Ask children to write a description of what they see while they are right there. Encourage them to observe carefully, soaking in as many visual and sensory experiences as possible. Try to arrange a meeting with some older residents - perhaps from a nearby senior center, older staff members at the school or family members of the students - so students can ask questions…and listen.  Record the conversations if possible. 

Back in the classroom, the children can each write their own paragraph or poem or draw a picture recalling what the older residents had to say. This can also be a group writing project combining the recollections of all the students. Uma notes that “cooperative rather than competitive activities in all phases of a place-based learning program will make for more authentic and participatory learning on everyone’s part.”    If there is time for a larger production, plan a celebration including the older residents to share the students’ stories, poems and pictures. As Uma notes, “outcome events crown your program.”

http://childrensbookguild.org/karen-leggett-abouraya

BACKYARD JOURNAL

by Joan Waites

Spring has finally arrived after a very long winter, and it’s time to enjoy what nature has to offer. We know from experience that in spring, trees are budding, flowers are bursting from the ground with color, birds are chirping, and insects are buzzing around. But do we really stop and fully experience this most beautiful season?

A fun art and writing activity to help encourage students to slow down and really observe their outdoor surroundings, is to have them keep a field or nature journal.

  

Using a simple handmade book of folded paper, a composition book, or a blank sketch journal, ask your students to record in pictures and words, what they see, smell and hear outside. Children can sketch individual leaves, flowers, grass, bugs, birds, rocks, bark, or anything else that interests them using simple art supplies such as colored pencils, crayons, markers and/or a set of children's watercolors. Observations can be recorded in their own backyard, the school playground, a local park, or even on a city street. Next to each sketch, ask students to write some important sensory information about the object(s) or place they have chosen to draw. A field journal could also work well as a year long project, asking students record what they see in each of the four seasons on a weekly or monthly basis.

Two books that can help introduce teachers and students to field or nature journals and corresponding activities are:

Happy spring!

www.joanwaites.com          

BLACKOUT: Personal Narratives in the Dark

by Jacqueline Jules

With thunderstorm season approaching and subsequent power failures, your students should enjoy an award-winning picture book by John Rocco called Blackout. In this brief story, a city family is too busy for a board game until the lights suddenly go out. Mom’s computer and sister’s telephone don’t work anymore. Dad can’t finish cooking dinner. The family huddles around a candle, making shadow puppets. They go onto the roof of their apartment building to watch the stars.

Blackout delightfully captures how a normal evening can be pleasantly interrupted by a power failure. And it could be a great writing prompt in your classroom. Read this story and have a class discussion about a time when the lights went out. Was it hot or cold? Did your family do something special together like play a board game or go outside for an evening walk? Students might remember eating melting ice cream from the freezer or going to the pool to cool off. Others might complain about having to use a flashlight to go to the bathroom or flipping on the light switch without results.

Ask students to describe the many things in their homes that no longer worked without electricity. Were they frustrated? Or did it become a time for storytelling and pretend games? If the power failure occurred at night, ask your students to describe the glow of the flashlight, the flicker of candles. Did they use their five senses more in the dark?

Since almost all children have experienced it at least once, the story of a power failure can inspire a fun personal narrative with lots of descriptive details. John Rocco’s Blackout is just short enough for a mini-lesson to leave plenty of time for student writing. I hope your classes enjoy this activity as much as mine did.

www.jacquelinejules.com

Inhabiting Your Character or Historic Subject

by Mary Quattlebaum

How might we bring a greater awareness of our characters or historic subjects (George Washington, Harriet Tubman) to the page?

This is one of my favorite exercises as a writer—and one my students of all ages seem to relish and learn from. It’s playful and illuminating.

*Be your character or historic subject for a day (or at least a few consecutive hours).   Try to bring all your senses to it.

*Put on the clothes (or at least some) she would wear.  Eat the breakfast she would.  Do chores of the time (wash dishes, for example, or find a stable and pat the horses).  Play a game or read a book in the way your character would.

*Move like your character.  Let yourself inhabit that excited child or hungry dog or frightened slave. Skip down the street or sniff your dinner deeply or hide in a shed at night and peek out.  Walk as your character walks.  (For my picture book Underground Train, I rode the Metro in Washington, DC numerous times while inhabiting my child narrator, trying to experience the sounds and sights as she would.)

*Enact certain scenes, especially if they have intense action or emotion (within reason, of course).  For example, for an escape scene, have someone truss you up and feel yourself first bound and then trying to figure out how to escape.

*What does your character really like to do?  Do that!  What does your character hate to do?  Try that too, always being your character.

*Take on the physical proportions and usual posture of your character.  If your character is short, get down on your knees and see/experience as she would.  If your historic figure is tall, stand on a chair.  Is a character aggressive?  Puff out the chest.  Sad?  Let yourself slump.

*Jot down your reactions, thoughts, feelings, etc.  Weave into the writing or be conscious of as you revise.

*This can be done at any time during the writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising) to deepen a sense of character/historic subject and their world, provide more telling details, and heighten kinesthetic awareness.

www.maryquattlebaum.com

SNOW GLOBES AND GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

by Jacqueline Jules

I remember the first time I was introduced to graphic organizers. It was a professional development day early in my teaching career, probably twenty years ago. The presenter in the workshop was so excited to share them. He gushed on about their usefulness in the classroom as if they were the best thing since sliced bread. I yawned. Freshly baked whole loaves are my preference and I have never personally used a graphic organizer. That doesn’t mean I forgo pre-writing. My writing always flows better after scribbling down some rough ideas before beginning a story or a poem. It’s the graphic organization of those ideas that made me uncomfortable. My brain doesn’t seem respond to connecting circles and boxes.

So I never used it in my own teaching, figuring my students couldn’t possibly be motivated by something that didn’t work for me personally. What an arrogant mistake!

Recently, two second grade teachers at the school where I work showed me the power of pre-writing with graphic organizers. They found a delightful lesson on Deanna Jump’s teaching blog about snowglobes. Each child not only created a snowglobe for the bulletin board, he or she wrote a story about what it would be like to live in a snowglobe.

When I read these second grade stories, I was blown away by the details the children included. They imagined the sensation of having their homes shaken up. They described snowflakes flickering down. Some imagined ways to break out of the snow globe to return to the real world. Others wrote about an idyllic life of sledding and hot cocoa. The stories were detailed and filled with sensory images.

“How did you do this?” I asked my two colleagues. “How did you get your second graders to write such descriptive and imaginative stories?”

The answer was pre-writing with graphic organizers. Before beginning their stories, the class discussed snow globes at length and the children were asked to fill out two sheets.

One sheet asked the students to fill in ideas of what it might be like to live in a snowglobe using an organizer from Valerie Noles' blog.

Another sheet asked the students to complete sentences. If I Lived in a Snow Globe, I would see…., I would hear …. , I would smell…, I would feel… from the First Grade Blue Skies blog  

This humbling experience not only convinced me that graphic organizers are useful teaching tools for pre-writing, it reminded me of all the wonderful resources teachers generously share on the internet. I am a little embarrassed I didn’t embrace organizers before, but sometimes, even the best of us, overlook good teaching practices.  

www.jacquelinejules.com

THANKSGIVING FOOD FIGHT!

by Jacqueline Jules

At Thanksgiving time, many classrooms enjoy persuasive writing. A very popular writing prompt is the DON’T EAT ME letter where students take on the persona of a turkey trying to convince the farmer to spare him from the chopping block. Students have a blast explaining why they are too scrawny or tasteless to eat. Since these pleas are written in letter form to a fictional Farmer Brown, there is an opportunity to review proper letter form in the process.   

A variation on this theme would be to ask students to write dialogues between foods sitting on a Thanksgiving table. Each food could explain why it is important to the holiday meal and/or the favorite of the family sitting down to eat. Descriptions of foods always provide great opportunities to incorporate the five senses. Does the food crunch in your mouth? Does it have a particular texture or taste on your tongue? What does it smell like?

The conversations between the foods could be playful or serious. The cranberry sauce could argue with the green beans over who is the most colorful or nutritious. The turkey could be a big bully who makes the other foods cry until the crescent rolls decide to take a stand. Maybe the pumpkin pie has an argument with the pecan pie and all the foods pick sides. The possibilities for creative dialogue are endless and students may have great fun performing their finished pieces as Reader’s Theater. For tips on giving each character in a conversation a distinctive voice, check out Mary Quattlebaum’s post on Two-Person Dialogue poems.  

  

And of course, don’t miss this opportunity to review grammar rules for writing dialogue. Many students neglect to begin a new indented line for each speaker or put punctuation inside the quotation marks.

Finally, please note that I said students should write dialogues between foods on the Thanksgiving table, rather than traditional Thanksgiving foods. Many first generation immigrant families, like the character of Tuyet, in my Thanksgiving picture book, Duck for Turkey Day, serve a holiday meal native to their birth country rather than turkey and stuffing. Writing about holiday foods from other countries and sharing their descriptions could become a lesson on diversity in your classroom. We need to remember that not everyone celebrates Thanksgiving in the same way and too much emphasis on turkeys can be uncomfortable for some children. On this theme, I wrote a song about foods on the Thanksgiving table that you are welcome to share with your students. This song, “A Holiday for All,” is set to the tune of Shortin’ Bread. Maybe your students will want to create their own lyrics to a familiar tune in honor of Thanksgiving, too.

 www.jacquelinejules.com

TRYING A NEW FOOD WITH A BEGINNING, MIDDLE, AND END

by Jacqueline Jules

Before our oldest son moved to New York City and married a New York girl, my husband and I were pretty timid when it came to restaurants. We almost always chose the same chain restaurants with American style food.  But entertaining New Yorkers, accustomed to a wide variety of ethnic cuisine, forced us to broaden our palates. We didn't want to be called boring by our adult children.

So the first time I tried Indian food, I was with my son and daughter-in-law at an independent local restaurant I had found in a coupon book and hoped was good. I didn’t really care if I liked the food or not. I just wanted my kids to be impressed that I had suggested something other than Outback or Olive Garden.

The restaurant was decorated in red and black. There was an open beaded curtain draping the entrance to the dining area that jingled softly as we walked through. When we sat down at a polished black wood table, the waiter told us the meal was a buffet.  We went up to the serving line to see an assortment of colorful dishes in steaming metal hot trays. Each one contained vegetables and/or meat in a dark sauce. No plain meat patties or white potatoes in sight. Spices I later learned were cumin and tumeric tickled my nose. A creamed spinach with homemade cheese chunks caught my eye. Everything was labeled clearly, so I knew that the brown lumpy substance in front of me was eggplant and onions, not a mystery meat. I took little portions of several things before going back for seconds. Some of the foods were a little spicy for my previously unadventurous palate, but I found most of them very flavorful and a nice change from more bland American style fare. I especially enjoyed the sweet carrot pudding on the dessert table. I’ve always been a fan of carrot cake and tapioca pudding. The Indian carrot pudding was a soupy mixture of them both.

All in all, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Indian food. From that time on, I’ve eaten at several different Indian restaurants and always enjoyed it. In fact, Indian food was my choice for a birthday and Mother’s Day treat in recent years.

So that’s my story of trying a new type of food for the first time. What’s your story? If you are looking for an easy structured lesson to demonstrate beginning, middle, and end, try asking your students to describe the first time they tried a new food. Ask them to answer the following questions in sequence:

BEGINNING:

1. Where were you and who was with you?

2. Why did you try the new food?

MIDDLE:

3. Describe the food and the place where you ate it, with sensory details. How did it taste, smell, look, etc? Can you compare it to other foods or experiences?

CONCLUSION:

4. What did you learn? Would you try the food again?

Conclusions, which are often hard for young writers, are particularly easy to develop when writing about a new food experience. It is natural to discuss one’s decision to eat the food again or not. With luck, this concept will transfer to narratives on other topics, such as vacations or accidents. Would you like to go there again? Did the experience teach you something about yourself?

So try asking your students to write about the first time they tasted a new food. And when you present the idea, describe a new food experience of your own. Students love to learn more about their teachers and when you write the prompt yourself first, you can give them a model to follow.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

SPRING TWEETS

by Laura Krauss Melmed

The ancient art of poetry and the much, much newer art of composing the Tweet both aspire to pack lots of punch into few words.  Sometimes these forms of communication intersect.   This was illustrated recently in an NPR story by Steve Inskeep about Nigerian writer Teju Cole.  Mr. Cole, who lives in New York City tweets at his Twitter account @tejucole.  His subject matter of late is (very) short stories based on small news items, those unattributed little articles found in metro sections which describe freak accidents and odd happenings.  Mr. Cole calls these stories “Small Fates.”  His first Small Fates project used items culled from researching a novel about Lagos.  Currently, his Tweets are based on items in New York newspapers of exactly 100 years ago. 

Mr. Cole’s tweets are often tragic or poignant and are obviously meant for an adult audience.  But at this time of year, having young students Tweet about how the world is springing back to life around them could provide a perfect structure for writing a poem.

The goal is for students to write a series of “Tweets” based on observations of springtime changes.  They will then put the Tweets together to form a 6-line poem.  These observations could take place either independently or following a short daily class walk or garden visit.  Show the students how to count the 140 characters allowable for each “Tweet.”  Stress that they will be using a different sense each day of the week to make their observations.  Make sure they know not to try to make these poems rhyme. 

Assign a sense to be explored for each of the five days of the school week. Students should then write a tweet a day for five days. Each should evoke a vivid picture, scent, sound, etc. through the use of such poetic devices as metaphor, simile, and personification. Daily Tweets can be written on index cards and displayed on a magnetic board for review and discussion. “Tweet” number six should summarize the student’s feelings about springtime. 

The students could illustrate their poems for a Spring Tweet display.    

Here is my own Spring Tweet poem:

Agreeable tulips nod heads together

ACHOO! A sneeze flies from an open window.

The scent of lilacs floats over me like a purple chiffon scarf

The breeze that tickles my bare arms also lifts a kite

If spring had a taste it might be asparagus

Somehow the world feels new.

http://www.laurakraussmelmed.com/

PENCIL TIPS: THE WRITING GARDEN

by Mary Quattlebaum

As the weather warms and eyes turn from page or screen to the greening world, a field trip can help enhance students’ writing skills and pleasure.

And you need not travel far.  Many schools today have created small gardens or grounds that can be used as outdoor classrooms.  Alive with plants, pollinators, and regional wildlife, these green spots offer hands-on and real-life lessons in math, science, natural history, geography, literature, and the arts.  You can also take a beyond-school writing trip to a public garden.

1.  In the classroom, prepare students by sharing poems or descriptions of plants, insects, and birds.  What details make the writing vivid?  Did the writer like or dislike this thing?  (See below for some of my favorite poems/descriptions.) 

2.  As a class, have them list things they think they will find in the garden.

3.  Have them bring their writer’s journals and pencils outdoors and challenge them to (1) look for the things they thought they would find, (2) add details (such as color, name, smell, texture, sound, and so on to “flower,” “butterfly,” or “bird,” for example), and (3) write down things/details they hadn’t expected.

4.  In the classroom, discuss their findings.  What were some surprises?  What one natural thing did they find most interesting?  Why?

5.  Ask them to write a short description or poem that includes specific details and three of the five senses.  For younger kids, you might also have them draw/color a picture and post their writings/drawings in the classroom for an “indoor garden.”

For more information on creating or teaching with a school garden, check online resources offered by the National Wildlife Federation www.nwf.org/schoolyard and National Gardening Association www.kidsgardening.org.

Some favorite garden poems/descriptions:

“Orchids,” “Weed Puller,” “Old Florist,” and “Moss-Gathering,” by Theodore Roethke in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke.

“Petaling” and “Me Boy. You Plant.” by Heidi Mordhorst in Pumpkin Butterfly.

 “You Never Hear the Garden Grow,” “The Nest,” “Cricket” in The 20^th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury, edited by Jack Prelutsky.

http://www.maryquattlebaum.com/

Revision Advice from My Summer Reading

by Jacqueline Jules

"Ultimately, the quality of a good piece of writing is determined by the amount of revision a writer is willing to do." —Marcia S. Freeman, Teaching the Youngest Writers: A Practical Guide.

Personally, I enjoy revision. It’s writing the first draft that feels like cutting the lawn, one blade at a time. Lots of authors agree with me on this. However, many students find revision extremely painful. How can we help?  In my last post, I shared two famous revision stories and one of my own in the hopes of encouraging young writers that revision is well worth the effort. Now, at the beginning of the school year, I’d like to share some advice about revision from my summer reading. I read three books: Reflections by Ralph Fletcher from the Richard C. Owen Author at Work series, Drop Everything and Write: An Easy Breezy Guide for Kids Who Want to Write a Story by Linda Leopold Strauss, and Teaching the Youngest Writers: A Practical Guide by Marcia S. Freeman.

Ralph Fletcher in Reflections readily admits that sometimes he gets defensive when editors suggest revisions to his work. He wants to shout like a four year old, “I’m not going to change a single comma!” But after he settles down, he tries to find a way to “own the advice” as he works on the suggested changes. Fletcher says that more often than not, “seeing my story through another person’s eyes has helped me untangle a tricky plot or story structure.” Calling his editors “co-creators” of his published work, Fletcher says that his editors have strengthened his writing and taught him many things. Page 44 of Reflections has a nice example of an edited page from Fletcher’s memoir, Marshfield Dreams, complete with crossed out lines, suggestions, and sticky note that would be great to show to students.

Drop Everything and Write by Linda Leopold Strauss has a number of exercises that can help young writers add sensory details to their writing. One activity is a “Listening Walk,” in which the writer records all the sounds heard on the street such as shoes on the sidewalk or a car driving over a manhole. Her example of her own “Listening Walk” would be a great read aloud model in the classroom. With entertaining anecdotes, Strauss warns against letting subplots or minor characters overrun a story and distracting the reader’s attention. She defines many important writer’s terms such as flashback, transitions, black moment, and voice. In a chapter entitled, “Show, Don’t Tell,” Strauss explains the advantages of including details rather than summarizing the action. She encourages young writers to spice up their writing by describing an angry character’s actions rather than simply saying he was angry or setting a scene with images from all five senses. Finally, she says that stories benefit from “drawer time” and gives a checklist for polishing a draft that teachers and students should find very useful.

Marcia Freeman’s Teaching the Youngest Writers addresses the kind of revisions done on the primary level. She provides concrete advice on what teachers can reasonably expect from kindergarteners and first graders, accepting that emergent writers are more capable of adding material than reorganizing a narrative told out of chronological order. Young students are encouraged by the opportunity to share their work. This in turns leads to a consideration of the reader and incentive to revise. “A writer’s first responsibility is to his reader,” says Freeman. Teachers can word compliments with this in mind. For example, “Your readers will like the way you told about your sister.” Reinforcing the reader’s needs can also be used in suggested revisions, such as telling young students that the repetition of a word “puts the reader to sleep.” Freeman defines the important distinction between revision and editing. Revision helps the writer make sure his message is “clear and interesting” while editing is focused on conventions like grammar and spelling.  But the reader is still important in the editing process, since punctuation helps the reader understand the text. Finally, while Freeman advises teaching the youngest writers to avoid seeing their work as something that can be finished in one sitting, she cautions against expecting perfection.

All three of these summer reading books enriched my own approach to teaching and writing. I hope they will be useful to you as well.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

by Laura Krauss Melmed

Midsummer gardens in my northwest D.C. neighborhood are splashed with day-glow orange lilies, sunny black-eyed susans and spikes of royal purple salvia.  Following on Pam Smallcomb’s recent post inviting middle grade readers to a literary picnic, this glorious garden display suggests a good summertime (or depths of winter) writing activity for younger children, centered around the question, “How does your garden grow?” Two picture books serve as good jumping off points for such an exercise.  They are My Day in the Garden by Miela Ford, lushly illustrated by Anita Lobel (Greenwillow 1999), and My Garden by Kevin Henkes (Greenwillow 2010).

My Day in the Garden begins with, “Breakfast with the morning glories” and moves through “hide and seek with a toad, flower-counting with the butterflies, berry-picking with the birds,” and more.  As evening falls, “fireflies come to say goodnight.” For a lesson based on this book, first ask the children to close their eyes for a few moments and imagine that they are spending the whole day in a lovely garden on a sunny summer day. What do they see? Smell?  Hear? What might they feel with their fingers? With their feet if they took off their shoes? Are there fruits or vegetables growing in the garden to pick and eat?  What do they taste like?  What if a lawn sprinkler were suddenly turned on?     

Next read the story aloud.  Then take the students through morning, afternoon and evening in their own imaginary garden, asking them to come up with activities different from those in Ford’s text.  Write their responses on chart paper or a smart board.  Also invite the children to take a careful look at Anita Lobel’s illustrations.  How did she bring her own element of surprising originality to the story? Why might she have chosen the colors she used?  Point out that Lobel’s illustrations are highly patterned, explaining what this terminology means. Ask the students why Lobel may have chosen to decorate her illustrations in this way. How do her patterns relate to the theme of the story? How do they make you feel? Finally, have each child choose one of the garden activities described by the class and illustrate it.  

In My Garden by Kevin Henkes, a little girl helps in her mother’s garden, which requires hard work, but imagines a garden all her own.  In this garden, “There would be no weeds, and the flowers would keep blooming and blooming and never die…the flowers could change color just by my thinking about it… the rabbits would be chocolate” and “unusual things would just pop up—buttons and umbrellas and rusty old keys.”  There would be tomatoes “as big as beach balls,” and strawberries “glowing like lanterns at night”.  For a writing exercise based on this book, children could create their own six page “My Garden” book with a sentence and picture on each page describing the features of their own fabulous, fanciful garden.  

For a craft activity to accompany either book, have the students create a Fanciful Flowerpot Garden. You will need a 5-inch clay pot for each child, acrylic paints, florists foam, three craft sticks painted green per child, construction paper, pages from old garden catalogs (optional), glitter, and an assortment of small decorations such as beads, candies, gold stars, etc. and glue. Have each child paint a flower pot decoratively. Then have them draw a flower, insect and vegetable on construction paper and cut them out, or alternatively cut pictures of flowers and/or vegetables from a garden catalog.  Onto the tops of three sticks, have each child glue variously, a flower, a vegetable and an insect. Then have them decorate their sticks with glitter, stars, beads, etc. Fill each flower pot with florist’s foam. When the glue has dried, push the bottom of the stick into the florist’s foam. Your fanciful gardens are ready to be admired!

http://www.laurakraussmelmed.com/