Second Grade Goes To Market To Market

As I alluded to in a previous post, I planned on using the book To Market To Market by Anne Miranda with my second graders this year.  We're finishing up our projects now, and I'm getting happier with them.  Ever notice how sometimes it's takes a time or two to figure out how to get the best work out of students?  That was me with this lesson.  It could have something to do with trying to get back in the groove of school, or it just could have been trying to figure out the best way to present the lesson since it was the first time, who knows?  But my second class' drawings were so much more colorful and detailed than my first class:

Here's the how-we-did-it:  I read the book, and they're second graders, so they HOWLED with laughter at the funny parts and the funny pictures.  We all loved the askew glasses and the 'THIS IS THE LAST STRAW!' part.  Then they went back to their tables with a piece of 12 x 18 white paper and a paint shirt.  I demonstrated using the bottom of a strawberry basket (the plastic green kind: I ordered a set off Ebay for next to nothing) to print the cart, and then used lids off soda bottles to print the wheels.  We didn't have any gray paint, so we mixed black and white with craft sticks in our paint pallets (also known as ice cream bucket lids, the round plastic kind, I use them for just about everything).  We then used those same craft sticks to print a little cart handle:

When they were done with their printing, they gave their paper to me to go in the drying rack and went back to their seats to make lists and drawings in their sketchbooks of what animals they'd put in their shopping carts:

I encouraged them to use descriptive words to describe their animals.

Though some were more descriptive than others. . . 

The next time that they came to class, they drew their animals in their carts.  I knew I'd get a lot of stiff-looking animals, so I demonstrated squeezing elephants and whales into carts in my drawings on the board.  This really helped them to think about how an elephant or lion or bear would look in a shopping cart.  The next time they came I let them color them with color sticks (the colored pencil without the wood things).

Now I'm sending the drawings back to their classrooms so they can write their own To Market To Market story.  I'm asking the classroom teachers to attach their writing and then send them back to me to display.  Hoping for cuteness + inspired writing here, so keep your fingers crossed, and I'll let you know.
One more for the road: