Diary of a Wednesday Kid: Make a Comic Like...

The first three Wednesdays in October (the fourth being during my conference committee duties) I ran a new program. It wasn't the most well attended program ever (6-10 kids each time), nor was it the most inspired program I ever did. But:
1) It attracted 3-5 graders
2) I got good feedback from those who attended
3) It took literally 15 minutes to develop and set up every week.

SO, here's what happened:

October 3: Diary of a Wimpy Kid
First, we started out reading the following excerpt from Dog Days:

There was this book Dad used to read to me every night called "The Giving Tree." It was a really good book, but the back of it had a picture of the author, this guy named Shel Silverstein.
But Shel Silverstein looks more like a burglar or a pirate than a guy who should be writing books for kids.
Dad must have known that picture kind of freaked me out, because one night after I got out of bed, Dad said: "IF YOU GET OUT OF BED AGAIN TONIGHT, YOU'LL PROBABLY RUN INTO SHEL SILVERSTEIN IN THE HALLWAY."
That really did the trick, Ever since then, I STILL don't get out of bed at night, even if I really need to use the bathroom.

(for the uninitiated, in the movie the dad is played by Steve Zahn, which is literally The Best.)
Of course, the picture he is referring to is this picture. I printed it out and showed it to the kids. We all agreed it was super creepy.
I gave each kid a piece of poster-size Post-It paper (do you have this yet? I don't know how I'd run programs without it. I'd probably have to plan in advance; what a drag) and I got everything started by telling them (while drawing) a Wimpy-like story from my own childhood, when my brother told me I should smell a pepper shaker and I totally did.

Maybe not a real-life Rodrick, but the facial expression is uncanny.

The kids then made their own comics. Check out this one by an avid Wimpy reader; it's a creative story about the dangers of attending a Halloween party as a mummy, and being mistaken as toilet paper:

October 10: Captain Underpants
I showed the following video about how to make a Flip-o-rama, by Dav Pilkey himself:

Then, I let them do it.

I love the top hat on the robot.

October 17: The Strange Case of Origami Yoda
I was going to have them draw in the margins of a pre-written story like the books... but, they liked celebrating books with video so much, I decided to show them two: A hilarious kid-made book trailer, and a how to for the infamous Fortune Wookiee:

I had paper for them to make their own Fortune Wookiees and Emergency Yodas, with printable instructions from Tom Angleberger's site:
Fortune Wookiee instruction print-out: http://origamiyoda.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/wookieeinstrux4web.jpg
Emergency Yoda instruction print-out: http://origamiyoda.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/oy5.jpg