Clever as a fox...

My book club has been reading The Case of the Elevator Duck, by Polly Berrien Berends. A lot of the chapter titles in this book are idioms, like "dead duck," and "hatching a plan." Every year when I read this book, the students and I have a big discussion about idioms. I got this idea from my friend Emmy, but it's super cute so I wanted to post it here. I assigned each student a different idiom. On one side of their paper, they had to draw a picture of what the idiom sounds like. On the other side, they drew a picture of what the idiom actually means. Their pictures are so adorable! I'm sorry for all the photos, but I couldn't choose any favorites... so I had to post them all!

She made sure I noticed that she colored the girl's cheeks pink, "because she's embarrassed!" 

This student explained that her picture was an illustration of herself zooming from one activity to another. Look at the little "moving fast" lines that she drew!

In the picture on the left, the speech bubble says "hhhu"--it's a breathing noise! And in the picture on the right, the boy is pointing to his eye. Such great details!

She's been learning how to draw horses--can you tell?

I love the picture on the right--being chased by a buffalo (or a bear... I can't remember) AND there's a cliff! Also she would want me to mention that the skeleton on the left glows in the dark.

This cucumber cracks me up.

My example when explaining this idiom was that even though I had 3 Barbie houses, I always wanted to play with my friend's Barbie house because it had an elevator. The boy who drew this picture drew a Barbie house! And a few minutes ago, he was standing outside my door showing off his work and saying, "I don't even know what a Barbie Dream House looks like." So funny!

In case you can't see it, there's a cat in the tree on the right. Precious.