Personality Beverages inspired by Lions of Little Rock

We are visiting with Kristin Levine tomorrow!

The fourth grade students have been reading The Lions of Little Rock in the classrooms. It connects to both the Civil Rights Unit that is part of the social studies curriculum, and the unit on character traits that is part of the ELA curriculum.

Inspired by the way Kristin Levine has Marlee describe her family members as beverages (and gives them a corresponding personality trait), the students have done the same, but of themselves.

We started out by looking at the examples from the first fourth grade class. (They were a few weeks ahead.) We then brainstormed beverages and character traits.

We came up with beverages such as: soda, hot chocolate, hi-c, kool aid, lemonade, seltzer, smoothie, frappe, shake, apple cider, milk, juice, tea, shirley temple, water, vitamin water, gatorade, pîna colada, root beer, fruit punch, apple juice, ginger ale, coffee...

We came up with character traits such as: bubbly, sweet, sour, fizzy, bitter, refreshing, unique, reserved, spicy, energetic, flat, tart, smooth, rich, deep, thoughtful, calm...

We talked about the visual message, and how it should match the written message, how the colors of used in the image of the beverage should make you think of the beverage and the colors and font in the word cloud should translate the personality traits and beverage as well.  I think they are understanding the idea, but this is something I want to continue working on with the students. I think this project could be done with any book and characters. I used Tagxedo for the cup image/shaped word clouds and Wordle for the free-form word clouds. The beverages and traits are just as diverse as the students:

Get to know my fourth graders!