More Fun with Frederick

With all my fixation on Leo Lionni's Frederick, I've given in and done a little lesson plan.  I'm not one of those people who thinks my kids need to be "learning" constantly, and I don't carefully plan every teachable moments.  It strikes me as a staged, inauthentic way to go through our days, so I don't do it.  I did think M could have a lot of fun talking about Leo Lionni's art since she is such a creative little thing.  I have always talked with the kids about illustrators and their unique techniques and styles simply because I love few things more than a beautiful picture book.  Frederick is a particularly good book to use as a spring board for a discussion about Lionni's work because it is about a mouse who uses words to paint pictures.  The art work is beautiful but simple, and so it is accessible to even the earliest learners.  I found a simple little lesson plan using Frederick to teach about collage - a technique M uses naturally.  I plan to par it down and focus on creating our own collage using a template   that is closer to the shapes Lionni uses, instead of the ones linked in the plan.  I'll show her how to create scenery by thinking of the shapes of what she'd like to make, then cutting those shapes out of colored paper.  With any luck we'll end up with such a cute picture E will want to make on of her own after school!  Again, A is too little to really participate in this one.  He is also completely disinterested in drawing or coloring in anyway.  I have printed some mouse coloring pages for everyone, and I'll consider it good if I get him to even make one little mark on his mouse.  He'll have fun checking in to see what M is doing though, and I know that sooner or later he'll want to do what she does.  Every kid learns to color eventually.

Happy Tuesday!