This month I did a unit with the kindergartners on using our imaginations. This tied in to what they were doing in class as well, so the timing was perfect.

I started out by reading them Antoinette Portis’s Not a Box and Not a Stick. Fabulous books, I was observed by my principal doing this lesson and she loved them. Then I gave each student a paper with a box on it, and we used our imaginations to make the box into whatever we wanted. They took those home, and we were off to a great start.

The next week we read Eric Carle’s Little Cloud and then went outside to see what shapes we could see in the clouds. Another winner, the kids loved it. With some classes we had time leftover to draw some pictures of cloud shapes.

And then this week we finished up with Laura Numeroff’s Dogs Don’t Wear Sneakers, which is a segue into the Laura Numeroff author study we’ll be doing in November and December. Because of all the upcoming holidays it takes that long to get through all the If You… books and make our own circular stories like last year.

Anyway, we’re reading Dogs and picking stuffed animals from the library’s collection to use in our own made up stories. The kids try and think of something ridiculous for their animal to do, just like in the book. And we finish by making drawings of the scenes we imagined for our animals. It’s been great fun, and the kids have made some great artwork in the library this month.