Craft Lesson 1

Craft Lesson 1: Buzz

Discussion:

In all books, descriptions of objects and people play important roles in setting scenes and characters. Words that create a sound in the reader’s mind are no exception. In the book Buzz, we have learned the power of words that make sounds and the importance these descriptors play in the setting and movement of a book. This craft lesson focuses on allowing children to think of these “sound words” and their use in everyday life.

How to teach it:

I would start off by reading the book Buzz to the class. I would follow up with something like, Imagine you’re getting ready for school one day, but you don’t hear any of the normal “morning sounds.” Your mom is preparing breakfast, but you can’t snap, crackle or pop of your Rice Krispies in the milk. You are brushing your teeth, but you can’t hear the bristles of your brush doing their job. Life just isn’t the same without the day-to-day noises we’ve grown use to hearing.

I would continue to explain how books are like real life, and without sounds they’re not complete. Sounds play an important role in every action we do. I would break the class up into groups and discuss other important sound words that we might hear during the day. Examples of these sounds are your feet crunching the rocks on a playground, or your cat meowing to you in the morning. Then as a group we will write a story with “sound words” that we thought of and make a classroom book of our own just like the book Buzz. At the end of the class, I would have a student read the new book that we wrote all together using “sound words.”