Dressing Pets

Send your pets to work as you choose careers and draw cats, dogs, and other pet pals in clothes and environments that fit their new jobs.

• 1.

  Consider careers or lives your pets might have if they were human beings. A spunky ferret might be a surfer, a lively parakeet might be a pilot, or a goldfish might be a deep sea diver, for example.

• 2.

  Think about the types of uniforms or clothing that various careers or activities require. Use Crayola® Colored Pencils on plain paper to draw your favorite pet in a costume for the activity you imagined.

• 3.

  On lined paper, write a descriptive story or poem about the pet in your drawing. Edit it, or ask a friend to review it, for spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

Benefits

• Students compare and contrast different careers and life choices.
• Children associate activities with uniforms or other clothing, and apply those associations to the creative personification of their pets.
• Children exercise their imaginations as they use descriptive writing, spelling, vocabulary, and grammar skills.

Adaptations

• Younger children and those with special needs can describe the drawings orally, dictating them to scribes or on tape.
• Older students could use their drawings to write short plays, created with animals as characters.
• Produce "Pet Portraits" as gifts for family and friends, with accompanying written descriptions of a favorite anecdote or event.
• Ask parents to consider submitting their children's work for publication in Books & Beyond on crayola.com.