Book of the Week GIVEAWAY: Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis
Why we love this book:
We love both books by Antoinette Portis, Not a Stick and Not a Box. These books illustrate exactly what childhood should be all about: pretend, imagination, creativity and making something out of nothing. Little pig finds a stick but wait a minute! It’s not just a stick! Join little pig and let your imagination run wild. When reading this book to children, we pause on each page letting the children guess what pig is pretending next.
Additionally we like the very simple, boldly outlined drawings. Since the children have been learning about the Five Basic Elements of shape from Drawing with Children by Mona Brooks, they could identify the elements found on each page: “Look, here is a dot. The stick is a straight line. Here is an angle and this is a circle . . .” Not a Stick gave birth to an idea for a new printable book: It Looked Like a Dot.
Drawing with Children: Part III
It Looked Like a Dot: FREE printable book
Look for the printable link at the end of this post.
Step 1 – Read Aloud: Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis and ish and The Dot by Peter Reynolds
- Each of these books spark the imagination and send a clear message to children that art is about creativity rather than being perfect. The children love, love, love these books! We do too!
It Looked Like a Dot illustrated book page, Miss Enigma, age 4
Step 2 – Introduce It Looked Like a Dot: FREE printable book
- Each page is a simple black line containing one of the Five Basic Elements of Shape: dot, circle, straight line, curve line and angle.
- The text corresponds on each page: It looked like a circle. But it wasn’t just a circle. It was a __________________.
- The children are invited to look at each page and draw anything they’d like from the dots, circles, straight lines, curved lines and angles.
It Looked Like a Dot illustrated book page, Miss Enigma, age 4
A few notes about Miss Enigma’s illustration. Let’s begin with the fact that she totally ignored all of the dots on the page. She’s four, so I did not force her to “use” the dots! She began by drawing the big pink circle and scribbled the “words” underneath in pink, “This is a hot tub for girls.” She drew some orange and green hot tubs and then moved onto drawing a blue dog. His name is Bingo if you hadn’t noticed. Miss Enigma’s favorite song is Bingo!
It Looked Like a Dot illustrated book page, Miss Enigma, age 4
I’ve included all of these illustrations by Miss Enigma to highlight the fact that she drew a dog on each and every page, totally ignoring The Five Basic Elements of Shape.
Miss Enigma used her stuffed dog “Bingo” as a model to draw her illustrations. I helped her look for the Elements of Shape, “His body looks like a big oval. Now he need a circle for a head. What shape are his ears? . . . “
It Looked Like a Dot illustrated book page, MacGyver, age 7
It Looked Like a Dot illustrated book page, Cousin S, age 6
During Spring Break the children were excited to have Cousin S come spend the night and play! While Miss Enigma took a nap, I gave MacGyver and Cousin S some quiet choices: play with Model Magic, draw or make a book. Cousin S eagerly chose to make a book. I printed her a copy of It Looked Like a Dot. She promptly informed me, “I can’t draw that!” I quickly realized, I hadn’t properly introduced the book to her. Time to regroup!
MacGyver and Cousin S snuggled up with me on the sofa and we read, Not A Stick, ish and the dot. That made all of the difference. Cousin S went flying through the pages. This illustration of a mouse eating cheese was one of my favorite. A six- year-old child looks at three circles on a page and of course she sees a mouse eating cheese. 
Print this book FREE: It Looked Like a Dot
This simple little book reminded of when I taught in public school and they asked us to “identify” our gifted and talented children. I always wondered why we wouldn’t want to give all children gifted and talented experiences. I have found that with a little creative inspiration and FREEDOM all children are eager to pretend, create, imagine, invent and think outside of the box!
I’ll just stop here and crawl down off of my soap box!!!
Life with Jeannine
We’re giving away a hardcover copy of Not a Stick by Antoinette Portis.
To enter this contest, just answer the following question in the comments section of this post.
Did you have a favorite pretend item as a child? I had many! We had two old saw horses in our backyard. My friend, Sharon and I use to ride those horses and play “Olden Days.” (Or just say “Hey.” We’re flexible around here.)
The Rules:
One entry per person, please.
No entries after 8:00 pm Central Time, Thursday, March 24, 2011
The winner must be a resident of The United States.
The winner will be selected at random and announced Friday, March 25, 2011. Check back it might be you!
For more art with children
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My brother’s helicopter. Though, I never used it as such. I used the landing part of it as my iron. I would iron my clothes over and over and over with that thing!
I don’t really remember one particular item, but my best friend and I lived right beside each other and we loved to pretend with anything. We used to play house alot in her playhouse in the backyard. We loved climbing one particular tree (it had a huge branch that we would climb to and sit and eat lunch) in the woods behind my house. We had lots of fun times!
Thanks for the Dot book. I just printed off 5 so all my boys can do one tomorrow!
My favorite pretend thing was an empty cardboard box! The bigger the better. Since we lived close to a military base we had and endless supply we were always building forts or houses. I have since found some cardboard barrels and have constructed a rocket ship for the children in my class. They have so much fun pretending to blast off to space. They have landed on the moon and we have even had sightings of aliens.
As a really young child I loved my horse mounted with 4 big springs on a frame. I spent hours and hours on that thing. I eventually got too heavy for it and managed to stretch out the springs. I also have fond memories of my popcorn popping stick and a shopping cart that became a part of my elaborate pretend play.
As a little bit older kid my Barbies became an amazing part of my play. I played with Barbies until I was much too old for Barbies and was embarassed to admit they were still a prized toy. LOL!
Fun to watch my young kids like many of the same things. Our shopping cart is a much used item! Simple things without batteries allow them to explore and imagine and that is my favorite way for them to learn!
I also loved pretending to ride horses. My friend and I didn’t use props though; we just galloped around and leaped over things. My son likes to ride on a broom, though he also has a hobby horse. My daughter used to pretend her blankie was a baby.
Mine is a favorite place verses a particular item. Anything could happen at my Grandma and Grandpa P’s house. It is so funny, I never wanted to go there as a child. Often times my brother and I would throw fits upon being dropped off. As an adult, I now look back at my childhood and find some of my fondest memories there. I had hours of pretend play with dress up and far off places. Sometimes my grandma even joined in.
My sister and I played with little people with random McDonald toy figurines mixed in. Every member of our extended family was a designated character and if I went through the figurines at my mom’s house, I could probably still tell you who was who. We played for hours and hours and hours.
I don’t remember one item in particular but I had a HUGE imagination. I dressed up. A lot!
Thank you so much for this printable book, I am going to use it right now because we need a diversion!!!!!
We used to do a lot of pretend my rearranging the living room and dining room furniture (bus, airplane, office, school, etc). I have had Not a Stick on my wishlist since we encountered it at the library. Love your printable too!
I really liked the post and the books that you included in your widget. One great book that we also enjoyed was called “Not Good at Art”. Thanks for another great printable.