Alexander it turns out, is an imaginary friend to a little boy named Chris. Chris spends a lot of the book telling his father about all the naughty things Alexander did during the day. It was interesting to me to see which students picked up on the fact that Chris was doing these naughty things and just blaming it on Alexander and which ones didn't. Chris tries to feel his father out and see what kind of punishment might await a certain imaginary horse but at the end is told that Alexander just had a bad day - that anyone can have a bad day, and that's okay as long as they try to be good the next day. I had a surprisingly advanced conversation with a few of my classes about taking responsibility for your own actions and not blaming others. To quote one little boy's observation, "His dad's probably more mad cause he wasn't honest then cause'a what he did."
Pretty smart for a first grader, huh?
Artistically speaking, Alexander is a great book for teaching pattern and line direction. Which is what I used it for following out in depth conversation about good character!
We painted different patterns on paper using tempera paints after the story. The following week we used glue sticks and scissors to assemble out own Alexanders out of geometric shapes. We cut fringe for the mane and tail, although next time we might use yarn.
Here are a few of the finished ones for you. Some are more horse-like then others. This was actually a very good project just from a skills evaluation point of view!
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| Kind of looks more like a rocket ship then a horse. |
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| No neck, but still adorable. |
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| Getting them to actually attach body parts so they were overlapping was surprisingly hard. Lots of dislocated limbs. |
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| This was also very easy to see who understood pattern and who did not. |
One little girl even did some Alexander fan-art when she was finished with her project. Here she is riding the Alexander she made:
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