Illustration Treasure Hunt

 

Just as your children learn their favorite lines from their favorite picture books, they also learn the details of their favorite illustrations. A fun twist on a standard treasure hunt is to search for things within favorite books. For example, your search may include:

• a yellow duck
• a rainbow
• an acrobat
• a really big letter R
• a ladybug
• a bunny in a tutu - from Sylvia Long's Mother Goose
• a bee - from Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever!
• a boy holding a stuffed animal

While their may be ducks in more than one book, you may just have one book with an acrobat. Once the kids remember which book holds an illustration of an acrobat, they must page through the book to find it. For kids under 4 or 5, you could pull out a pile of 10 books so the kids have a finite search area. If you wish, you could put a (flat) surprise on the page holding the last illustration. For kids 7 and up, you could use their entire collection of picture books. Even when they are reading independently, this is a fun challenge.

This is a great way to start talking about illustration with children.  Is it pen/ink, charcoal, watercolor? Are the illustrations abstract or of real things? Are the illustrations highly detailed? Are they funny? Do they show things that happen in the story? Are the colors pale or vivid? Can you be creative using just black ink? What style do you like? Can you try to follow a certain style of illustration?

Wonderful books about children's illustration, written for children, include The Art of Eric Carle and Artist to Artist: 23 Major Illustrators Talk to Children About Their Art.