Introducing young children to poetry can be a challenge since most poetry does not have an accompanying picture. But I’ve found a great picture book for boys, that has really colorful pictures that go along with a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s called Block City and is illustrated by Daniel Kirk.
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Block City LEGO Print Mural
Block City is a cute poem with illustrations about a little boy who spends the day building with his blocks. I’ve wanted to pick up this book for Caden ever since I saw this great activity at Little Bins for Little Hands. A couple of months ago, I finally ordered a copy, thinking it would be a fun book to read to inspire Caden to play with his blocks, but as usual he wasn’t interested in playing with his blocks. So I set up an art activity inspired by the book and Caden loved creating a Block City LEGO Print Mural!
This activity couldn’t be easier to set up! All you need is some large paper, painters tape to keep the paper from slipping, tempera paint and Mega Bloks or Duplo LEGOs is various sizes and shapes! I cut a length of paper from our roll of craft paper, taped it down, squirted some paint on paper plates, set out the blocks and much to my surprise Caden, who isn’t really an artsy-craftsy kid, jumped right in!
Caden loved exploring the different colors, shapes and prints created by the LEGOs. We both really had fun, using the LEGO prints to create an abstract city-scape mural! I showed Caden how he could turn the blocks different ways to create different prints with the LEGOs. And then we started mixing colors to create new colors!
When we were all done, we had a pretty cool abstract city-scape mural to hang up on our art display wall!
Can you tell which parts were done by Mom and where Caden created prints? He was really focused on creating buildings that were crashing down! What can I say, he prefers demolition! 😉
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What a fantastic piece of art! Seriously, love it.
It might not be demolition by the way. As I see it, he added movement and flow to the painting.
Yes, that is true!
Oh my goodness, if there was ever way to get kids excited about poetry, you have found it!!!
Thank you for helping to bring a spoonful of reading fun to the Poppins Book Nook this month!