“It Looked Like Spilt Milk” Writing and Art Activity

My favorite thing about teaching is creating activities based off of children’s books!  Today I’ll share with you how I use one of my all time favorite books, “It Looked Like Spilt Milk,” to create a fun writing and art activity for early learners.  These activities are suitable in small groups or centers.

I like to start by reading aloud, “It Looked Like Spilt Milk,” by Charles G. Shaw.  I snagged these adorable velcro character pieces from a sale a few years ago that go with the story.  While reading the story you can invite the children to place a velcro character piece on a felt storyboard as you read along.

Tip: If you don’t have the velcro character pieces, you can print and laminate pictures from the story and add sticky back velcro for use with your felt storyboard, or grab a flannel board set  and create them! 

Writing Activity

Now that the story has been introduced to the class, you can then create a fun writing center activity.  This is the method I very much prefer.  I’m a firm believer in providing children with many opportunities throughout the day to practice writing skills.  You can do this in different creative ways that don’t always entail worksheets.

For this writing center I would include a box of dry erase markers, dry erasers, clip boards and laminated stationary.

I am in LOVE with my pocket chart that has a felt space at the top and sentence pockets on the bottom.  It’s perfect for this writing center activity.  I write each word on a sentence strip and place the matching character next to it for reference for early readers.

The children are encouraged to copy words from the sentence strips onto their laminated stationary with dry erase markers.  I truly enjoy watching children have fun with writing and this center activity gets them writing with enjoyment!

I laminated random die-cut shapes that I had on hand for the stationary.  My children are familiar with using these die-cut shapes as we regularly use them for various projects and activities.  Something to consider would be to use a more generic laminated stationary or use one fun shape.  It might be a little confusing to children to write the word, “tree” on a star.

Here’s another example of some fun, laminated die-cuts that would work:

Art Activity

My favorite art activity to accompany “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” is creating blob art with white paint!  It’s the perfect small group activity.

Supplies Needed:

• Black construction paper
• White paint
• White crayon

Steps:

1. Fold a black piece of construction paper in half
2. Open the black construction paper
3. Place a blob of white paint in the center of the construction paper
4. Fold the paper in half and press the paint down
5. Open up the paper and try to see what shapes or silly picture the white paint created
6. Write down in a few words what you see (teacher assisted)

My favorite part about this art project is seeing what the eyes of a child can see that I can’t!  It’s incredible what their imaginations can come up with!

Here are a couple of my favorites:

I hope that this activity brings you and your children joy and you too fall in love with this beloved children’s book! Happy reading, writing and creating!

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