HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON

by Joan Waites

Most of us are familiar with the classic children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, first published in 1955. It’s a book I often checked out of the library as a child, and then later read to my own children. Now the book with its worn dust jacket sits upon a shelf in my art teaching studio. I have read the book many times to my young students, using it as an introduction to a lesson on line and shape.

In the story, using just one purple crayon, Harold draws himself a magical imaginary adventure. There are no limits, parents or rules for Harold to obey; his imagination and one purple crayon can take him anywhere.

Using the illustrations in the book, have students identify straight lines, zig-zag lines, curvy lines, wavy lines etc. Next, ask students to identify the basic geometric shapes that make up some of the drawings.

For an art and writing activity, make up individual blank books using any size white paper stapled or glued at the fold. Have each child draw themselves (using a purple crayon or marker) into their own imaginary story that begins and ends at their bedroom window. Ask older students to write text to accompany the illustrations, have younger students explain their drawings to the class.

Where will a purple crayon and their imagination take them?

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SUMMER OR AUTUMN

by Alison Ashley Formento

School may have started where you live, or it will start soon, but you can keep summer memories strong and celebrate the season to come, too. This easy and fun writing exercise encourages students to use personal experiences to compare and contrast the seasons of summer and autumn.

Write your favorite summer activity.

Example: Swimming at the local pool

Write five personal facts about that activity.           

Example:

Swimming helps me keep cool on a hot day.

It’s fun splashing with my friends.

I like to dive off the side of the pool.

I came in third in the backstroke race in my age group.

My arms are strong from swimming. 

Write your favorite summer food.

Example: Watermelon

Write five personal facts about that food.

It tastes sweet.

It’s cool in my mouth on a hot day.

I like to collect watermelon seeds.

I planted a whole cup of seeds in my yard.

It’s fun to eat watermelon with my hands.

Write your favorite autumn activity.

Making a leaf pile in my back yard.

Write five facts about that activity.

I help my family rake leaves in our yard.

I like to pile the leaves next to an old tree stump in our backyard.

Jumping into a giant pile of leaves is fun.

One leaf pile I made was taller than my dad.

My dog likes to hide in a leaf pile.

Write your favorite autumn food.

Apple pie

Write five facts about that food.

My family goes to a farm to pick apples for pies.

Fresh apples off a tree are fun to pick and crunchy to eat.

I help my mom make crusts for pies.

Apple pie makes our house smell like cinnamon when it’s baking in the oven.

Warm apple pie makes vanilla ice cream melt, but it tastes great together.

Use the personal experience facts you’ve listed to write a convincing explanation for readers why you believe one of these seasons is more enjoyable than the other.

www.alisonashleyformento.com

VARIATIONS ON A VACATION

by Alison Ashley Formento

It’s summer and many of us are going on vacation or taking time to visit friends or relatives. You may be traveling by train, plane, boat, car, motorcycle, skateboard, or perhaps by foot. You might explore wonders of nature, ride wild roller coasters, or visit your favorite cousins. Vacation experiences vary for each of us depending on how you travel, where you go, what you do, and, of course, who you see or meet on your trip.

Variations on a Vacation

List four basic facts about your vacation:

1.     How you traveled

2.     Where you visited

3.     Where you stayed

4.     What you did (Name at least one activity or vacation experience.)

Example:

1.     Pittsburgh to see relatives

2.     In a plane and a car

3.     Visited grandparents

4.     Saw a wild bird habitat

Condense your vacation facts into a short travel poem:

A plane,

car ride, too.

Curvy roads to

Pittsburgh. 

Grand

Parents

hug so sweet.

Tweet! Tweet!

Look! An aviary

full of beautiful,         

singing birds.

Feathers fluttering…

Family fun.

Write a paragraph in first person with more personal details:

           

I traveled on a plane to Pittsburgh. At the airport, my family rented a car to visit my grandparents. Grandma is sweet and she made sweet donuts for us, too. Yum! We went to a bird habitat called an aviary to see cool birds. I saw a penguin and even an eagle. It was awesome! We took lots of bird pictures and then our family got dressed up and went out for fancy dinner for my grandparent’s anniversary. I ate chocolate cake. Yum! It’s my favorite!

Write another variation in third person to add in more narrative details:

           

One summer evening, a young girl and her family flew far from her home on a jet plane to Pittsburgh, a large city in western Pennsylvania. After gathering their luggage, they rented a minivan and drove along a highway and many hills and curving streets to a lovely red brick house with a big tree in the front yard. The girl’s grandparents welcomed them with hugs. They had homemade donuts and milk for a good night snack. Early the next morning they went to visit an amazing aviary, where the girl saw birds from all over the world including a bald eagle. “It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. The family took photos of many birds they saw that day, including penguins, pelicans, and even an ostrich. They went to a special dinner at an elegant restaurant, to celebrate their grandparent’s 35th anniversary, where the girl ate chocolate cake for dessert.

           

Try using dialogue only to share your vacation memory or imagine your vacation in the style of a comic book and add drawings with the words. What other fun variations can you write to describe your vacation?

Have a wonderful summer vacation!

www.alisonashleyformento.com

SNOWFLAKE TO SNOWMAN: WRITING ACTIVITY

by Alison Ashley Formento

It’s the time of year for snowmen and you might be singing about Frosty, laughing at Olaf in FROZEN, the fun new Disney movie, or building a snowman on your front lawn. Frosty and Olaf are memorable characters, who happen to be made out of snow. They also both face the possibility and challenge of melting.

One popular snowman writing craft encourages kids to make a melted snowman out of a paper bowl and construction paper and write about their own snowman to explain why it melted.

 Here’s another great way to use a snowman (or snowwoman) to develop explanatory writing skills, useful for science research and report skills.

Snowflake to Snowman: Step-by-step writing

       

1.      Photograph images of snow at home and at school. If there is no snow in your town, use winter pictures from magazines and newspapers.

2.      Find books on weather and arctic geography and read about the different kinds of snow. 

3.      Write down at least ten facts about snow.

4.      Write step-by-step instructions on how to build a snowman, including the snow facts. Number each step. Imagine these instructions are for someone from a desert region who is seeing snow for the very first time. Include every detail to build a snowman; from how to roll a snowball to placing a carrot for a nose, and how to make a snowman smile out of rocks. The more details shared for each step, the easier it will be for others to follow your instructions.

5.     Read the instructions aloud to see if you included all information needed to build a snowman.

6.      If there is snow on the ground at your school, bundle up, go outside, and have fun following one another’s step-by-step snowman building instructions.

7.   Finish this step-by-step writing task by building your own snowman with a big smile.

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AMAZING ALLITERATION

by Laura Krauss Melmed 

This is the first in a series of planned posts on poetic devices.  I’ll start with alliteration, the repetition of the same sounds or of the same kinds of sounds at the beginning of words or in stressed syllables.  Of the various poetic devices, or purposeful ways of using sounds and words, alliteration is probably the easiest and most fun for children to understand and experiment with.

It’s easy to find examples of alliteration that kids will relate to.  A Wikipedia article on alliteration points out that the names of many book characters are alliterative.  In the Harry Potter books, for example, the four wizards that founded Hogwarts were Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, and Salazar Slytherin.  Among the professors are Severus Snape, Minerva McGonnagall, and Filius Flitwick, while the students include Luna Lovegood, Cho Chang and Moaning Myrtle.  Other literary examples abound: how about Willy Wonka, Peter Pan, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and Tiny Tim?  Cartoon characters across different studios include Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Donald, Daisy and Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and SpongeBob Squarepants.  Sports teams often “sport” alliterative names such as the Buffalo Bills and the Pittsburgh Pirates.  And authors sometimes use alliteration for book titles, the way I did in Moishe’s Miracle; Hurry! Hurry! Have You Heard? and The Marvelous Market on Mermaid.   Start by offering examples such as these to your students and then have them come up with others. 

Why is the use of alliteration so common?  Alliteration is fun.  It trips off the tongue, or sometimes trips it up, as in “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”  Poets use alliteration to enhance the sound and sense of what they’re saying.  In the opening lines of my picture book, Jumbo’s Lullaby, I used repetitive, soft, “sh” “f” and “l” sounds to express Mama Elephant’s tone as she tries to lull her restless baby to sleep:

Susha, susha, Mama’s darling,

Stars are twinkling up high,

flickering like little fishes

in the river of the sky.

In their midst the moon is floating

Glowing with a gentle light,

like a pearly water lily

that has blossomed in the night.

Susha, susha, little Jumbo,

Mama’s love will hold you tight.

In Valerie Worth’s poem “Snake” from Animal Poems, the poet summons her subject’s sinuous slither with sibilant sounds:

Spilled to

A liquid

Silt, a

Slurry of scales..

while in Monday’s Troll, Jack Prelutsky bloviating, bragging blowhard of an ogre describes himself as follows: I’m Bellow the ogre/I bluster and boast…

Prelutsky also uses alliteration to conjure up a week’s worth of truculent trolls:

…Friday’s troll is great and grimy

Saturday’s is short and slimy—

But Sunday’s troll is crabby, cross

And full of sour applesauce.

Other examples abound for the quoting.  After students get the hang of it, ask them to come up with a zany or funny alliterative sentences of their own, the more outrageous the better, which they can then write out and illustrate on large sheets of paper.  Astute students are assured of finding this an amusing avenue for activating alliteration!

http://www.laurakraussmelmed.com/

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LOOPY LETTERS

by Mary Quattlebaum

We tend to take the letters of the alphabet for granted.  Face it, we’ve sung the ABC song umpteen times as parents or teachers.  We use letters daily to construct words; we’re familiar with their basic shape.

But take another look.  Letters are amazing!  Check out the delightful “oo” sound and waggly tail of the round, capital “Q,” the explosive, breath-puff of “P,” which looks like a flag.

Letters and alphabet books might be a jumping off point for playful writing explorations for folks of all ages.

Sound and (Non)sense.  In 1871, Edward Lear published an alphabet book that tickled the ear and the funny bone.  Using Lear’s book as a model, you might have students each choose and embellish a favorite letter.  For example, Lear’s poem for “C” reads “C was once a little cake,/Caky/Baky/Maky/Caky/Taky caky/Little cake” in An Edward Lear Alphabet by Edward Lear, illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky (HarperCollins).

Letters and Things.  As a tot, my daughter loved the short rhymes and photographs of everyday things in John Updike’s A Helpful Alphabet of Friendly Objects, with photographs by David Updike (Knopf).  After sharing this book with students, you might have them bring in a photo of something that begins with a particular letter and write a short poem or description.  Updike’s “V for Vacuum Cleaner” begins with sound and action:  “In goes dirt,/out comes noise!/Rumpling the rug/and scattering toys…”

Mischevious Alphabet Books.  Tired of the staid, predictable “A is for apple” type of alphabet book?  Shake things up with An Alphabet of Rotten Kids by David Elliott, illustrated by Oscar de Mejo (Philomel) and Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel (Roaring Brook).  Such books encourage larking about.  Students of all ages might write poems or silly descriptions of their own names or create a naughty human or critter character.

Who knows what wild, wacky, and wonderful writings these four alphabet books might inspire—for your students and yourself?  Have fun!

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MORE STORY STARTERS

by Joan Waites

Back in November of last year, I wrote a blog entry featuring a “story starter” exercise which used a single prop to jump-start story ideas. At a recent workshop weekend offered by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators ,workshop leader author David LaRochelle lead us in another “story starter” exercise that  would work well for students of all ages, and can be adapted to use as an “art starter” as well.

Using index cards, ask students to write down on five separate cards the following:

A Character 

 (Example:  spider, robot, 12 year old girl)

An Emotional Situation 

(Example:  losing your best friend, moving to a new country, not making the cut for the soccer team)

A Place

(Example:  frozen lake, another universe, the top floor of a skyscraper)

An Object

(Example:  sewing needle, lava rock, teddy bear)

Next, have students shuffle the cards and exchange 2-3 of the cards with a partner.

Finally, using the cards they have chosen, ask students to quickly write down ten ideas (one or two sentences) for a story based on the words on their cards. Pick one of these ideas and develop it further.

For a variation of this exercise, have students cut different pictures from magazines, newspapers, or junk mail. Ask them to find pictures of people, animals, places and objects and glue them to the cards.  Have students exchange several cards with each other.  Students will then draw a character in a location and/or with an object based on the cards they have chosen telling the story in their illustrations.

Using this exercise with either the written word or with pictures, students have endless possibilities to jump-start their imaginations!

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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!

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