Don't let the Pigeon...

How much do little kids love the Pigeon?!  My grade one class cheers when I pull out one of Mo Willems' Pigeon books.  I was inspired by this Art Dish with MJ activity and used it during our safety unit.

We did a directed draw of the Pigeon.  Black oil pastel was used to trace over our pencil lines and yellow was used to colour in the beaks.  Then we painted our pigeons.  When dry we did a few touch ups where the paint may have blurred out some of our drawing.  Then students had to cut out their pigeon "in a bubble".  I do that occasionally due to the lack of cutting skills of many 5 and 6 year olds.  This way I can ensure that we won't lose half the pigeon in the process of cutting him out!

After brainstorming safety rules, each student chose one rule to print in a speech bubble.  Some examples were:
"Don't let the Pigeon talk to strangers."
"Don't let the Pigeon play with fire."
"Don't let the Pigeon stand on the chair"

Making Connections

  

In my grade one class we have been doing a lot of work on making "connections" when reading.  I read them the heartwarming Melanie Watt story Augustine.  In it, a little penguin moves with her family from the South Pole to the North Pole.  She misses her friends and grandparents and is nervous about starting a new school.   All the while Augustine has her art supplies and stuffie named Picasso to help her along.  It touches on familiar themes such as feeling left out and making friends. I thought this was a perfect book as we have been discussing families, changes in our lives, and friendship this term. 

I also love that each page parodies a famous art work with Augustine in mind - a few of my really sharp cookies managed to make one or two connections there!

To do this lesson we drew our sketch of Augustine onto lilac construction paper.  I did give them a tracer template for the head so that they had a good starting point and reference as to how big I wanted the drawing.  They then followed a step by step drawing, following my instructions on how to complete the rest of the body.  Basically, Augustine is shaped much like a snowman, with each lower section slightly bigger than the last.  We then adjusted the midsection to create flippers.  Next we drew the beak and all the other facial features and finally the feet.

We used white pastel to outline our drawings and colour in the face.  Orange and black pastels were also used where needed.  We actually used a grey crayon for the body and not pastel.  We did this for 2 reasons.  First, I only have 5 grey pastels.  Most standard sets of 8 or 12 do not contain grey.  Second, I kind of wanted the lilac paper to show through the grey a bit as Augustines fur is like this in the illustrations.

We then cut out our penguins and glued them to a green sheet of construction paper with a strip of magenta for the floor.  Simple, but super cute.  If I had more time for this lesson I would have added her red backpack and maybe even her suitcase, as seen on the cover of the book.



The one above is one of my favorites!  Why so sad, Augustine??



I love the way this one looks a bit like it is dancing!!!

We also wrote out one of our connections to add to our bulletin board.