It's All About the Pigeon. {I Love Mo. 2nd Edition}

It's the last few weeks of first grade, which means it's time for little blue pigeons to cover the walls of our classroom!  And, in case you haven't seen my last post about Mo--you should know that I love him.  He writes the cutest, funniest, and sweetest books for children!  Mo {Willems} is author of the Pigeon books, Knuffle Bunny series, and Elephant and Piggie series!  If it is possible, I think my students love Mo even more than I do!  For the past week, they have been busy reading every Mo book on the shelf, performing reader's theater plays based on the books, writing and illustrating their very own pigeon books, designing new characters, laughing with friends as they buddy read a favorite story, and making connections between the books to themselves and to real life!   It is AWESOME.  

Here is our "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive..." class wall story!  

The kids read the wall story with a buddy using a fun pointer!

Below is our GIANT pigeon.  After this picture was taken, we decided to add descriptive word cards all around him.  One student described the pigeon as "extraordinary."  Great use of our first grade vocabulary!  :)

Okay, I know I said it was "All About the Pigeon", but I have to share this fun art and writing project we did after reading the Knuffle Bunny series!  In the Knuffle Bunny books, Mo uses real black and white photographs as the background setting for his pictures, and his characters are drawn as bright little cartoons that seem to pop off the page.  They are the neatest books!  I printed out some black and white photos and had the kids draw Trixie, her Daddy, and Knuffle Bunny and add them to the photos.  Some even added the pigeon, because Mo hides the pigeon at least once in all of his books.  In the one below, the pigeon is washing off in the fountain...

The author and illustrator below even used some of Mo's language that he uses in all of the Knuffle Bunny books--"Then...Trixie REALIZED...SOMETHING..."  So cute!