Get Inspired: Use Polylino during National Book Awards Week

Over 1 million children use Polylino across Europe, Canada, and the US. We asked a preschool using Polylino in Töreboda, Sweden, about how they integrate their lesson plans with the National Literature Prize—here in the US, next week is the National Books Awards Week, and we created a bookshelf dedicated to these books. Read on for inspiration for how you can use Polylino to make the most of this week in your own classroom!

Tell us a little bit about yourselves and the preschool you work at.
We are preschool teachers and work at Syrenen preschool in Töreboda, Sweden. Syrenen is one of four preschools within the Töreboda urban area and we work with a project-based approach. With the oldest children of the preschool, we focused on a project that would bring together the National Literature Prize and expression through art.

How many times have you used the literature prize as part of a lesson plan?
This was actually the first time we launched this project, and we thought it was an exciting way to immerse ourselves in books with the children. This activity spanned two weeks: Each day, we read two books and the children voted on their favorites to let them participate in the judging process themselves. We then used the most popular book as inspiration for an art project. We projected the book onto the wall and the children referenced the pages to draw their own illustrations for the books, and we encouraged the children to talk about their work or interpret each other's. At the very end, we combined all of the illustrations into our own, original book, which was put on exhibit at the municipal library!

How do the children like this activity?
We felt that the children really loved having time for reading and immersing themselves in the books through other ways of working. They gained new perspectives of the book and came up with their own hypotheses and thoughts during our reflections together. We especially noticed that they benefited from hearing from others' perspectives and saw what they had missed in their own listening. They thought it was fun to vote for their favorite books and advocating for why they preferred their chosen book.