We have been reading books from the amazing author, Mo Willems. There is so much we have learned from his writing and illustration techniques. We learned about speech bubbles, he uses them often in his texts. Another point of focus has been on Willems use exclamation points. When there is an exclamation point at the end of a sentence he makes the text really big. Or when a character is trying to be quiet, he makes the text much smaller. This small technique portrays a ton of emotions, especially to our young readers. They can tell that the character is really mad or excited if the text takes up the whole page, or they can tell if the character is sad if the text is written in a much tinier font.
Another major focus was the life lesson of friendships, how to be a friend and what that looks like. Willems role plays the thoughts and speech of friends throughout his books.
Mo Willems can also get a little sneaky with his techniques, when reading some of his literature that isn’t in the Pigeon Collection, sometimes if you look really closely you can find the Pigeon hanging out in some of his other books.
Each pic below is of each student with their favorite Mo Willems book!
We began our Mo Willems Study for the month of April. We started with The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. Mo Willems uses interesting techniques in his illustrations that many artists don’t use. We focused on his use of speech bubbles and the text size. Tiny words for a small whisper voice and HUGE words for a character that is YELLING! The students drew their own Mo Willems Pigeon and added a speech bubble with their own text. We can’t wait for our next Mo Willems book!
Creative Tots has specialized in the private education of both toddlers and preschool age children for over 15 years. We began in the heart of Madeira and now also have a new Mason location. We are specifically designed to focus on early childhood development for children ages 18 months to 5 years.
Click below to learn more about our program offerings: