Since it is Picturebook Month, I decided kindergarten and 1st grade would study an author or two who has written several picturebooks. I also wanted kid friendly videos to introduce the author and fun centers for students to enjoy. I searched through several authors and decided to go with Leo Lionni.
To introduce my students to Lionni, I played two videos from the Random House site: "Why Leo Writes" and "Leo Makes a Mouse". These are the perfect length for younger students and they ALL loved watching Lionni create a mouse from pieces of paper.
Right after the videos, each table of students had a different activity center. They rotated through these centers every 8 minutes.
Centers:
Draw like the Illustrator bookmark: Cut copy paper in thirds to be the size of a bookmark (for little hands) and provide crayons. Each student looked through a Lionni book and modeled his illustration style.
Mouse Shapes: Using Lionni's mouse books (Frederick & Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse), students took shape blocks and formed them to look like his mice.
Little Blue and Little Yellow 'picture': Provide students with white paper and blue and yellow crayons. They draw a picture in blue and then color over it in yellow, therefore turning the picture green.
A Color of His Own 'create a chameleon': Students are given pipe cleaners and asked to make a chameleon. The idea came from this site.
Leo Lionni Books: Students were given tablets to listen to Leo Lionni stories on via Youtube Kids.
Students LOVED these centers!
Image from randomhousekids.com
It's just an excuse for me to read more books to my younger students. I started making a list of my students favorite books or ones I see them checkout often and was going to town until I started collecting photos of the authors and realized they were all White. STOP! Now, it's time to look up some authors from diverse backgrounds and introduce a few of those wonderful writers. On the list: Nikki Giovanni, Grace Lin, Donald Crews, Alma Ada Flor, Mo Willems, and Peter Brown. I feel that I was quite successful in our reading ventures, especially since students non-stop picked books to checkout from the display shelves of these authors.
Here is how I introduced the concept which I borrowed from Pinterest (once again proving to myself that I don't just collect and store, I use pins too). 3 authors one week, then 3 different authors the next week. I showed my students a flipchart on the Promethean Board that would allow me to graph each classes favorite author (this is where the photos came in handy). I read aloud the stories and we discussed what we liked about each book and what we would change about each book. Then I played videos of the authors, so that my students could see that authors are REAL people. After that, they voted on which one they liked the best--which was tallied as a class for the graph.
Books read:
I Am Invite to a Party! by Mo Willems
You Will Be My Friend by Peter Brown
The Sun Is So Quiet by Nikki Giovanni
Fortune Cookie Fortunes by Grace Lin
Night at the Fair by Donald Crews
I Love Saturdays y domingos by Alma Ada Flor
Image courtesy of hin255 at freedigitalphotose.net
