A Proper Lesson Post | Where The Wild Things Are

I post lots of photos of my kids' work, but I never really post about how I do my lessons.  On account of Maurice Sendak's recent passing, I thought that a post about my kids' "Wild Things" would be an appropriate lesson post. [I know this project has been done a million times, but it's because it's so stinkin' cute!]




I started off with an introduction to texture PowerPoint.  Here are the slides all together-
I asked the students to describe how the objects in the photos would feel to touch.  They had to use words like bumpy, smooth, rough, hard, soft, etc. 

After that, I started to move into how artists draw texture, and I hinted at what our project might be.  There were a few pictures from the book, and we tried to describe how the wild things might feel.
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After the PowerPoint, I read Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and had the kids describe the textures they saw.  Then, I gave the kids texture tubs full of fur, shells, sand paper, rubbing sheets, etc. for them to feel.  They used them to complete a texture practice sheet before we began drawing our wild things.

For many classes, the PowerPoint, the story, and the texture sheets took the whole class period.  If students finished early, they could do a "blueprint" for their wild thing on the back.

On the second day, we drew the wild things with pencils making sure to draw lots of texture, we traced with markers, we colored with crayons, and then we embellished with feathers and beads! [And yes we are still working on the whole "corner sun" situation...]