Stickman

Perhaps you have read Julia Donaldson’s Stickman.  But then again, maybe you have not, because although her books are very popular in Great Britain, they are not as well known here in the United States.  Auntie Dot actually brought our first Julia Donaldson picture book, The Smartest Giant in Town to us when she traveled to England many years ago, and then a few years later we ran into The Grufflalo at the library.  I wasn’t actually aware of the plethora of picture books this author has written until my friend from Singapore told me about some of the others.  Sometimes it is hard to acquire copies of the books, but we have had great luck with Amazon’s used book sales.  (Other favorites are The Highway Rat  . . . a spoof on “The Highway Man” that every English teacher will appreciate, Superworm, and Zog.)

Anyway, Stickman is the story of a man made out of sticks who accidentally ends up on an adventure where characters are constantly mistaking him for a regular old stick.  He travels farther and farther from his “family tree” and desperately wants to get back home.  The ending of the story makes this book a perfect December read aloud.

By absolute chance the other morning, while perusing the internet looking for something else,  I ran into a bunch of ideas of sensory play based on this wonderful book, which happens to be one of Mr. Trouble on Feet’s favorites.  We decided to modify and try some of the ideas out ourselves.  We used the tree trunk blocks to make a forest on the activity table, and we brought in little sprigs of Christmas tree branches from the branches that were trimmed from our trees.  We stuck them in play dough to help them stand up.  Mr. TOF drew hiking trails on a large piece of paper under the “trees.”  Mr. TOF went outside and gathered some sticks that we hot glued together to make our own stick man.  It was a very exciting morning project, and a lot of fun to set up.