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My attitude towards writing with my children has completely shifted in the last few months after reading about early literacy and drawing and writing. The shift is that drawing IS early writing. To me this gives my kids drawing times a much deeper significance and also means they need both time to "just draw" completely independently and time to learn new things about drawing. This task is not easy for me as I am FAR from an artist.

When I read this book to them I had no preconceived "lesson" or thought, they have been interested in ocean life, particularly squid... (slightly obsessed actually) and so we got this book from the library. 
At the first reading I realized they could probably draw the same type of pictures as the "squid" in the book does. I put the book away and thought about how we use mentor texts in upper elementary and what would a mentor text look like for preschool? The next time we read the book I had paper and markers ready. I read the book and then sat down to draw with them. I said, "I think I can draw like the squid in this book. I can make triangles and circles and squiggly lines." I opened the book to the page above and studied it with exaggeration.  "Hmmm, I think it would look like this," I said and I drew. My picture is not included in these. They jumped in. "Mommy I think I could draw like that too!" Awesome!

Next we flipped to the back of the book and saw the page of many many pictures and started picking which ones we could try. They were completely engrossed for over a half hour. This is the same/ very close expectation I have for upper elementary students after a lesson (about 40 minutes) of independent work. I was surprised with the results!
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The above pictures are from boy (5) and girl (3).

The picture to the left is my 3 year old. She can recognize the word STOP! from stop signs and I was very impressed with the details of the T.

Lastly, this did not stop with a brief time. The next morning they grabbed the book and continued to make more pictures with out me.

I can't wait to go back to the library with a new focus. I want books with pictures we can try! I will be interested to see if they start looking at books this way independently...
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Literacy Idea inspired by:

Work with Susan Radley Brown in district level trainings

and reading The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy Calkins

For more "Mentor Text" reading visit:

http://teachwritingright.blogspot.com/search/label/Skillfully%20Using%20Mentor%20Texts

www.reading.org/downloads/53rd.../mentor_texts_cappelli_dorfman.pdf


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