Ideas for getting creative with your French writers:
• Use the speech and thought bubbles to create dialogue, memes, and cartoons.
• Make fun greeting cards and gift toppers for your family members and friends
• Write captions and tweets
• Print the French writers on card stock, and then cut the heads out and make popsicle stick puppets. (Just glue the top inch or two of a wooden popsicle stick to the bottom of the back of a portrait, and that's it!) Glue on speech bubbles or other captions.
• Choose a few of the portraits to be characters in a story or play you're writing. Use your popsicle stick puppets to share the story with others!
How to use Caption This:
Felix Vallotton was a Swiss-French artist in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Although he was an accomplished painter, what he is best known for is his work with modern woodcut art.
When I saw his series of French writer portraits done in woodcut, I knew I had found a delightful treasure that I wanted to share with you. Each face shows so much character and interest, and I could immediately see how this could be a launching point for some really fun creative writing!
Perhaps you'd like to figure out how to write your captions in French, or learn some common French words that would be a great addition to your project. (Oui! Oui! Voila! Ooh la la! Merci!)
Don't forget you can always add colors and other details to these portraits to make them even better!
It took my teenagers about 3 seconds of looking at this art to start coming up with a steady stream of hilarious comments, quotes, and reactions to the French writers, so I trust your children will also find these a source of entertainment and inspiration! This is my favorite type of writing--where it's so fun that the kids don't even think of it as a school chore.
My hope is that this art+language arts activity will be an enjoyable and fresh way to learn and make connections for your family!
