1. Remember the Story! Game
2. Make a Storyboard
3. Draw Like Harold Does
1. Remember the Story! Game
Grade Level: 2 – 4
Adapted from the game Harold and the Purple Crayon by Briarpatch
Harold is out for a walk, crayon in hand. As he travels he draws his world. Let’s help Harold create his new adventure!
Object of the game:
Players copy the game card drawing, one at a time, onto the paper wall mural and they use it in a story. Players must remember the exact sequence of drawings on each turn. The story gets longer as players add new drawings. If you can tell the whole story from start to finish, you win!
Getting ready to play:
Attach a long sheet of paper to create a paper wall mural along the classroom wall. Be sure to hang the paper at the children’s eye level. Have players sit in a line in front of the paper. Leave room for the player whose turn it is to move freely in front of the paper. Pass out purple crayons. Place the game cards in random order, face down, in a stack.
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Printable game cards (good for coloring projects, too!) |
Playing the Game:
If it is your turn, turn over the top card in the stack. Copy the game card drawing onto the paper wall mural, and begin the story.
Example: Starting at the left hand side, the first player draws the picture on his card (say it’s a bicycle) and says, “One beautiful day, Harold went for a ride on his bicycle.” Put the card face down in a discard pile.
The next player who has, say, a butterfly drawing draws a butterfly and may say, “Harold was riding on his bicycle with his friend the butterfly.” And the next, who has an ice cream cone drawing, may say, “Harold was riding on his bicycle with his friend the butterfly, when they decided to snack on ice cream.” Keep the order of the discard game card drawings intact as they are proof of the sequence.
Each player has to start at the beginning and retell the entire sequence as they add to the drawing. You do not have to tell the story exactly, but you must repeat the sequence exactly. In fact, you may want to make up a completely new story! Example: “Harold got a bicycle for his birthday. He named the bike Butterfly and rode off to buy ice cream.”
As the story gets longer it becomes harder to remember the correct sequence.
When a player makes a mistake she is out. The players who are eliminated become the monitors for the other players who are still in the game.
Winning the Game:
If you are the last player left in the game, and can repeat the sequence of the entire story correctly from start to finish, you win!
PA Learning Standards for Early Childhood: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening 1.6: Speaking and Listening
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2. Make a Storyboard
Grade Level: PreK – 1
Object:
Create a classroom storyboard by drawing pictures of what you like and together drawing yourselves out of problems that occur, like Harold does!
Getting ready to play:
Take a walk outdoors with the students. Look carefully at the trees, plants, rocks, and other objects you come across. Help students to notice the different “essential” shapes of objects. For example, point out that there are straight lines in the trunk of a tree, circular shapes in rocks, triangular and zig-zag shapes in flowers--or leaves on the ground or snow mounds--and in mountains.
Materials:
one roll of white paper (minimum 18 inches wide and long enough for each player to have an approximately 2 foot length section); masking tape; purple crayons. Attach a long sheet of paper from one end of a classroom wall to the opposite end. Be sure to hang the paper at eye level for the students.
Making the Storyboard:
Give one student at a time a purple crayon and have her press the point of the crayon against one end of the paper. Allow her to move the crayon along the paper in any way she chooses. Talk with children about what this crayon marking looks like (mountain range, river, highway, etc.) Give the next child the crayon, asking him to add appropriate details to the drawing. Continue by allowing each student in the group an opportunity to add something to the drawing.
Next, have the students dictate a story based on the drawing. As storylines are developed, write them down, using pictures instead of words when possible. Work together to combine the ideas and organize them into a beginning, a middle and an end. Work with the group to develop a theme similar to Harold’s, the theme of how problems can be solved through perseverance and creativity.
Copy the story so that it can be displayed, along with the initial “storyboard” drawing.
PA Learning Standards for Early Childhood: Science 3.4 Recognize and solve problems through observation, trial, and error, interactions and discussions with peers and adults. Science 3.1 Take Children on nature walks to observe. Reading, Speaking and Listening 1:1 Connect the new information or ideas to known information.
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3. Draw Like Harold Does
In 1955 Crockett Johnson wrote and illustrated the book Harold and the Purple Crayon. The performance The Adventures of Harold and the Purple Crayon is based on this book. Harold is the main character in the story. Harold draws what he wants, and when his drawings get him into trouble, he draws his way out of his problems.
Materials:
Sheet of white paper, purple crayon
How to Begin:
Draw a straight line from one side of your paper to the other side of your paper, and one third of the way from the top of your paper. This is called a horizontal line. For your drawing this will be the horizon line. The horizon is where the sky touches the land. Because the sky is above and in front of you, and the ground is beneath and in front of you, the sky and the ground have to meet at the horizon.
Draw a moon like Harold’s moon in the sky. The sky on your paper is the area above the horizon line. Harold’s moon is crescent-shaped. It is a circle with a scoop taken out of one side.
Draw a path to walk on. Pick a point on the horizon line. Make a dot. Next pick a point at the bottom of your paper and make a dot. Make a straight line to connect the two dots. Pick another point at the bottom of your paper, at least a hand’s width apart, and make another dot. Connect that dot with the SAME dot on the horizon line. Can you see that you made a triangle? The path will show that your drawing has a foreground (up close area), a middle ground (what is ahead of you but not too far away) and a background (the place to where you want to travel).
This technique is called one-point perspective. Perspective can make your flat piece of paper look like a real place. The first artist to do this was named Ambrogiotto, or Giotto for short. He lived from 1266(?) to 1337 in Italy. When Giotto was a little boy tending his sheep in the hills near Florence, a successful Florentine painter who was walking nearby saw him very busy at something. When he came closer, he saw that Giotto was drawing a picture of one of his sheep on a piece of slate. Never had he seen such a drawing from the hand of a child! He asked to speak with his father, and he asked his father if the boy could become an apprentice in his studio (if the boy could come to study and work with him). His father said yes. Giotto was his master’s most successful pupil, and when he grew up, he was the first painter to bring realism to flat paintings. This helped lead to a renaissance--a rebirth--of painting.
Academic Standards:
PA Standards for Kindergarten: Arts & Humanities Standard 9.1: Production, Performance and Exhibition of Dance, Music, Theatre & Visual Arts: Create a picture using lines and shapes
PA Standards for Kindergarten: Mathematics Standard 2.9: Geometry
Source:
Ruskin, Ariane. The Story of Art for Young People. Pantheon Books: Random House Publishing (1964). 55.
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