In a continuation of my Dr. Seuss unit (can you tell I'm having fun?! You should have seen how long our Surrealism unit was! We created Magritte inspired art for nearly 7 weeks!) my third graders were presented the task of coming up with the true identity of the Once-ler in Dr. Seuss's book The Lorax. Now if you have seen the new feature film of The Lorax, as many of my students have, the film shows the Once-ler as a young man with green gloves. We discussed as a class how the film was made after Dr. Seuss's passing- so the idea for the young man is someone elses 'idea' of what the Once-ler looks like. I show them a clip from the original movie produced by Dr. Seuss and demonstrate that in the book and original movie we never see more than the Once-ler's arms and eyes. So that opened the field for their imagination to come into play and decide for themselves who the Once-ler really is!
We took a large sheet of white paper and folded the ends to meet in the middle. On the outside they drew the arms and maybe eyes of the Once-ler and on the inside they drew the entire body. This way you have to open the page to 'reveal the true identity'!
This student featured the Once-ler as a pile of cash... very interesting idea!
This student made her Once-ler into a Truffula Tree, another innovative idea!
Here we have the Once-ler as the Lorax's evil twin brother- LOVE it!
And this student portrayed the Once-ler as the Cat in the Hat.
As you can see I have a group of incredibly creative third graders! This was a very enjoyable project that took about 1 1/2 class periods. I read the book and had them begin drawing the first class and then we wrapped up the drawings and early finishers got to watch the original video (about 25 minutes long on YouTube).
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