Imagine

Alison Lester wrote this adorable dreamy story of what seems to be a brother and a sister, and all of the imagination that they could possibly possess. They turn their kitchen into an ocean, their snowy backyard into the arctic, their Lego set into a farm in the countryside, and well I'd go on but I can't give away all of the adventures! What I like about the book is that once they reach their imagination destination, bordering the illustrations are all of the words of objects that you can find in the artwork, kind of like an eye spy. I read this book one night while doing some other graduate work and hanging out with my boyfriend, and we had fun searching for all of the little words and trying to figure out the names of some of the exotic animals within the illustrations. More than anything, Alison showed how something so simple could become so vibrant with life with just a little imagginnattionnn. :)

So, on to how this book could be used for teaching: creative writing all the way. This book reminds me of art class, when Mrs. W.P. would give us a squiggle with black marker on a piece of paper and we had to create something spectacular from it. She would give us that task whenever we had finished early, and it now reminds me of writing, and how you can take a simple idea and expand it's complexities to make something awesome. A pre-activity could be having the kids find something small in the classroom like a pencil sharpener, a notebook, the flag, etc. From there they could tell an elaborate story with intricate details, making a simpler object into something much more. As a post-activity, they could share their stories with the class, or put them in the hallway for other students to read up on. Sounds like fun to me :)