As you know, I’m on a mission to sneak in art projects into the life of my youngest son, who has declared that he “hates art”. So far, I’ve gotten him to make tape art and handprint art, but this “make your own giant comic strip on the floor” has gotten him the most excited about picking up the markers.
All the men (read: husband, a 10 year old and a 6 year old) in this home are comic book nerds. I really do not understand the appeal, but whatever. If superheroes got my son to touch slime, I’m all for it. My oldest son does a comic book studio class at school and when his brother (you know, the one who “hates art”) said he wanted to make comics, too, I took advantage of the opportunity.
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Although we have worked on small books before, when he was obsessed with Star Wars, I knew I wanted to make the comic big because my son’s fine motor delays means he had trouble drawing in small spaces. Plus, it’s always good to combine gross motor movement with fine motor work, like we did with our giant dot to dot.
I decided right away that I would do the writing. If I insisted he write the words, I knew he would quit early, and my main objective was to facilitate artistic creativity, not practice handwriting.
I lay down a large sheet of paper. If you don’t have a giant roll of paper, you need to get one right away! We use ours all the time! Unfortunately at the moment we are out of my favorite 36 inch roll (which, by the way is perfect for body tracing!) so I pulled out the 24 inch roll. I drew the boxes and my son decided on the title.
He made up the story, but I helped him figure out what scenes needed to go in which boxes by discussing the size of the box, how many were left, etc.
He dictated the dialogue and captions. As you can see, he is brilliant.
My older son decided there was no way he was going to be left out of this action and he set about creating his own giant comic strip, with no help from me whatsoever.
maryanne @ mama smiles says
Comic strips were my breakthrough when I was learning French (living in France) as a kid! My kids love them, too, and we will definitely try your activity!
Sheila @ BrainPowerBoy says
Just saw this on Pinterest today – don’t’ know how I missed your post earlier! We love (LOVE) comics at our house and this is going to be a big hit. My son is constantly drawing comics and I know he is going to really enjoy going
b i g. thanks. sharing.
Erica MomandKiddo says
Enjoy!
Catrina says
I’m planning a “Super Hero” camp for the kids at my summer camp. This is a great idea! I think it will reach all the skill levels (since we have kids from age 5 to 11 here). Thanks for sharing!
Dominique says
Hi Catrina,
I know this is a few months late but I’d love to know how the super hero camp went?? I’m currently helping to plan one based around English language learning with a ‘Superhero Science’ theme. Would be great to know what went down particularly well, and what didn’t?