My second graders are just wrapping up some adorable collages inspired by the book Rolie Polie Olie by William Joyce.
William Joyce is local to our area and the kids loved learning about someone who is from their city. Before I introduced them to Olie and his fun family we talked briefly about some of the other books William Joyce has written. Some of them had checked out Dinosaur Bob from the school library, but what really hooked them was when I started naming the movies.
Robots, Meet the Robinsons, and Rise of the Guardians were all films they had seen. Yet, even though we had named and discussed so many of Mr. Joyce’s contributions to their childhood they had not yet remembered Olie.
Rolie Polie Olie had a tv show that was on when these kids were still in diapers and preschool. I picked it because I thought they would remember it and be so excited. However, halfway through the first day of the lesson no one had guessed we were going to read about Olie and I was getting a little worried.
Then I set the book on the ELMO and the whole class erupted in cheers and shouts. Turns out they did remember Olie and his sister Zowie and even his dog who they all agreed “looks like the dog from toy story and that’s soooo cool.” Once everyone settled down we read the book and got started discussing the project.
We designed our own characters that might have lived on Olie’s planet inspired by Olie and Zowie. They sketched their designs on the first day and those turned out great!
The next few weeks we worked on cutting and gluing together collages made of construction paper.
This was the first time I had students this young use a sketch as a guide. I wasn’t too surprised when they started picking colors of paper that didn’t match their sketches at all. Some of them did a great job of matching up their characters and even creating interesting backgrounds and themes.
To see the rest follow the link below…
This was our first collage of the year and it was quite the undertaking so the results aren’t as outstanding as I would expect normally but over all the kids worked so hard and we’re all super proud of these!
Here’s some that did pretty good matching to their sketches. I especially love the one with the little bow tie.
These didn’t keep to their sketches as well but they still did an awesome job. I love the Mario themed one he even put pipes and mushrooms in the background! I can’t wait to try this lesson with another group of kids next year I think I learned a lot about keeping things neat and organized that will make it easier in the years to come.
