Class Activity: One Day with Stillwater

If a giant talking panda in shorts showed up at your house one afternoon, what would you do?!

That’s the situation in which Michael, Karl, and Addy find themselves in the Caldecott Honor–winning picture book Zen Shorts—and at first, they don’t know what to think! But then they invite the wise panda named Stillwater to spend the day with them, and he helps each sibling see their lives from new perspectives through the stories he shares.

If your students could spend the day with Stillwater, is there anything they’d want his help with? What do they think he would say? After reading Zen Shorts with your class, encourage your students to draw their imagined interactions with Stillwater in this free printable activity:

Students will:

• Have a chance to be creative

• Practice text-to-self connections

• Think critically

Plus you can pair this activity with Stillwater, the upcoming animated series on Apple TV+, by encouraging your students to imagine this exercise as their very own episode!

What would your students do with Stillwater? We’d love to see their art! If you’re able, please share with readers and other Scholastic Book Clubs teachers on Facebook and Instagram by using the hashtag #ScholasticBookClubs.