Here are some ideas for activities to go with some of the Blue Spruce nominated titles. Please feel free to add other ideas.
1. Making Grizzle Grow: give students a dinosaur template (I had a number of generic templates for students to choose from). Then I gave them scraps of fabric and they made a colourful dinosaur collage. I reminded them that throughout the story Grizzle grew and changed colours as she became a different dinosaur.
2. My New Shirt: give students a template for a white shirt. Have them write their name in the centre of the shirt using grafitti style art and then draw objects of things that have meaning to them as they create their own "new shirt". Conversely, if you can get your hands on some cheap white t-shirts, students can tye-dye a new shirt.
3. Eliot Jones Superhero: Students can create a new superhero to promote the library. They will make a new superhero and create a poster to advertise the library and the love of reading.
4. Chester: Have students select one of the three characters (mouse, dog, cat) that they relate to the most. Students will draw and make one of these characters and then using a popsicle stick turn them into stick puppets to reenact the story.
Please feel free to comment on these activities and post any ideas that you have for these and the other Blue Spruce books! Thank you.
I wanted to give the primaries a taste of Smart Ideas, so I asked them to do a spider diagram showing their connections to My New Shirt. Most of them had a lot of fun with it, and seemed to understand (with a little nudging) how to show the hierarchy of ideas. Most had experience with grandmas, birthday presents, and bad dogs!
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