I love basing projects for young children on picture books. (Another recent example is here.)

It’s so fun to read an exceptional book and then make art in response.

This week, the second graders and I read Big and Small and In-Between (Higgins/Miyares).

It’s such a beautiful and poetic book that is a wonderful way to start a conversation about the scale of things - how they look and feel. Here’s favorite spread showing something small:

Expressing ideas about scale meets NGSS DCI requirements for this grade level. Expressing feelings about scale - and having those feelings validated - supports students’ social-emotional well-being. We celebrated the kiddos’ perceptions of their worlds by making paintings.

Yordi made a diptych he was very excited about. He said that the biggest thing he could imagine was a whale’s heart:

And the smallest? An ant’s heart.

The students created paintings of rain drops, planets, dragons, sprouting plants, and volcanos. They shared their ideas about what was big, small, or in-between. I learned so much about them through this exercise, even though we’ve been creatively experimenting together for eight months.

I think it was the way the book gave them permission to share the poetry of their own perception that inspired such unique conversations.