Our Animal ABC Book

The cover - the letters are cut from extra painted paper

Earlier in the year, while we were studying animals, we made an animal ABC big book.  This project took some serious time but was well worth it.  My class loved to spend free time reading their ABC book.  Getting started - We brainstormed animals for each letter of the alphabet.  Sometimes there were debates over which animal would be best and why. We had to take a vote for some letters.  There were also letters that took some research - like x, for example.  Everyday we spent about 15 to 20 minutes doing interactive writing - "A is for alligator." until we had a sentence for every letter of the alphabet.  Next - we turned our attention to illustrating our book.  We went back to our brainstormed list and decided which colors we needed for our animals.  We made several pieces of  painted paper - using the chosen colors to paint white construction paper and then drag plastic forks through the wet paint to add texture.  After the paper dried, we traced animal tracers onto the back of the appropriate color of painted paper.  I decided to use teacher made tracers so that all the animals would be the perfect size for the book.  The students cut the animals out. Finally - they glued the pieces (some animals had more than one piece) and the interactive writing to the page along with the letter.  They added details to the animals with black crayons giving their page a finished look. We laminated and bound the book to add to our library.