Read About Robots, Make Robots

... We've been doing just that all month long! There are too many fun robot books to not have a robot-themed unit! I'm so excited about this one, I'm creating a full literacy-pack that will be available on the Teachers Pay Teachers site... eventually. Just as soon as I find time to complete it... aaaaand figure out how the heck to post it into my store (I'm a serious newbie there).

I'll share some of the fun with you here, and I encourage you to grab some robot books to read with your kids or students. You don't even have to suggest a craft or activity to follow these books - the kids suggest and ask for it themselves! I mean, what kid doesn't want to make a robot?

Here are the stories we read:

We played some robot games after each story, and these games helped us practice some essential early literacy skills like rhyming, vocabulary, and alphabet knowledge.

Then we created! Each class project serves as catalysts for further story discussion, it gets the kids' creative juices flowing, those imaginations start dreaming things up, and then they end up with a fun little reminder of that week's story to take home with them!

Here are a couple of the projects we made:

Inspired by the art in Robot Zombie Frankenstein, we pieced together colorful geometric shapes, cut from foam, to make our own unique robots. The end pages in Robot Zombie Frankenstein beg for a project like this to be done after you read the book!

This week we are turning ourselves into robots with these fun robot templates I created that we simply added our photo to! So fun! Each student gets to share about what kind of robot they are - we have learned about various kinds of robots from our reads! We had some "Robot Zombie Frankensteins," and we had some "chef robots." 

Do you have a favorite robot picture book? Would you mind passing it along in the comments? I've got some little readers itching for more great book recommendations on this topic!

Robot Zombie Frankenstein: The next book you should add to your collection

I was thrilled when Annette Simon allowed me to review a copy of her picture book Robot Zombie Frankenstein. I tend to also be a tad nervous about reviewing picture books, because what if I don't like  it??? I luckily did not have to confront that fear with this review, because Robot Zombie Frankenstein was a home run with My Little Reader.

Simon's book tells the story of two robots that get into a friendly game of one-upping each other with various disguises. Zombies, pirates, space-invaders... the fun-factor increases with each page. Who will win this robot-battle? I don't want to give any spoilers, but a peace-offering finally ends the feud, and a friendship is formed by book's end. You'll have to check out the book to see what brings about the peace!

I honestly wasn't quite ready to show my son this book yet when I did. I was waiting for a nice chunk of time to do a solid read through and some kind of planned activity. But he found it sitting in my room and instantly snatched it up and demanded I read it to him. OK, so I know it's cover has some obvious kid-appeal...

My Little Reader is such a Mr. Literacy Launchpad Jr., he saw the layout of colorful geometric shapes on the endpapers at the front of the book and started suggesting crafts and projects we could use these shapes as inspiration for: "Let's make these shapes with paper, Mom, and then glue them together into our own robots..." These endpapers were definitely one of his favorite parts of the book - he kept going back to them even after reading the story several times.

The bold, colorful robots, set against the clean white background was visually appealing to my son and I alike. It seemed to feel accessible to my son, something he got, and could then mock and expand upon in his own creative way. The predictable catchiness of the text had the same effect. I caught my son flipping through the book on his own and "reading" it aloud independently just by the visual cues in the illustrations and being able to recall the incredibly fun and simple text that had stuck with him so solidly after just a few readings.

Robots have such a mass-appeal with kids of a variety of ages. And this book is so creativity-inspiring for little ones. I have bunches of ideas of fun activities to do after reading this book with your kids or students. You'll see some of those ideas in an up-coming video post (I'm in the planning stages of launching a full Literacy Launchpad YouTube channel!).

In the meantime, check out some of the fun My Little Reader was having with this book this week. This was all initiated by him! Love that kid! Love this book!

Buy the book!

 

Visit Annette Simon online HERE!