Over the summer my husband gifted me with a whole set of books by Diane Alber. At first I thought it was a little crazy of him to buy a whole collection of books for me so randomly but after reading the first one it became pretty clear why he picked them. Her books are filled with adorable characters made out of splats. dots, scribbles, and snippets of paper. Those characters then teach some pretty amazing lessons about kindness.
I could not wait to start planning projects centered around them.
I decided to start at the beginning, with I’m NOT just a Scribble and at the beginning of my grade levels with Pre-K and Kindergarten.
We started by watching the read aloud video on Diane Alber’s website. The kids loved how the little scribble bounced along during the story.
After watching the video we reconnected back to our school kindness project and talked about which characters were being bucket fillers and which were bucket dippers.
We finished our first class with a scribble session on a plain piece of paper. This was a great chance for us to practice our classroom routines and procedures too. I have started a new one this year. When I say “Mona Lisa” all students sit like Mona Lisa and wait for instructions. So we ran through that a few times while they scribbled.
The next week we explored the inside cover of the book. There are a ton of different facial expressions and emotions on the scribbles. We practiced our favorites on some scrap paper and then when ready drew faces, arms, and legs on our scribbles.
EVERYONE did amazing. It was so much fun. All our scribbles are now on display in the school hallway on a bulletin board that says “All great art starts with just a scribble” which is the opening line in the book.
