Visiting School with Zinnia's Flower Garden

I love visiting schools and sharing my books with children.
I had a wonderful welcome at PS 347: a bilingual American Sign Language and English lower school here in Manhattan. Some children in the classes are deaf but many have deaf parents, and I had an interpreter, Rick Rubin, by my side.

It was snowing as I traveled across town, and so it was especially fun to share Zinnia’s Flower Garden: there is nothing like flowers to help put everyone get in the mood for spring!
I read the book as Rick translated it into ASL.

And then I showed some stages of working on the book. I did research by learning more about flowers:  I grew flowers, I went to the library for books about flowers, I went to gardens...

I got started on my book by making tiny sketches like these:

And then the children did some of their own “research” with flowers.
I brought a beautiful bouquet and they all picked flowers to observe and draw.

 They did fantastic work. I think there are a lot of future scientists and artists amongst them!

Thank you so much to Gary Wellbrock, teacher extraordinaire, for these photos! Read more about all that goes on in his classroom at http://followingyourbliss.blogspot.com/