Fun with Elephant and Piggie!

We LOVE Elephant and Piggie!  And Pigeon! And Knuffle Bunny!  Pretty much all of Mo Willems' books!  Okay... I guess basically I just love books... but Elephant and Piggie are special!

This week we had an Elephant and Piggie story time.  :-)  Do you see who is trying to sneak in?

That silly Pigeon!  Don't worry Pigeon, you'll have your own special day in a few weeks.

Ms. Debbie and I acted out/read There Is A Bird On My Head.  I knew we were having fun with it, but it wasn't until I looked at the pictures one of our patrons took of us reading, that I saw how focused the children were on us.  I think the kiddos may have enjoyed it almost as much as we did!

Of course we sang and danced, and Ms. Debbie read another book about our cute friends - and then we got to play/learn.

I downloaded the Pigeon and Duckling finger puppets from PigeonPresents.com.  Mo Willems has all kinds of awesome resources for schools and libraries to use for his book celebrations, and there are also online games for children to play on his site.  You should definitely check it out!

The children made "nests" from paper bowls and brown paper.  I especially love the skinny pieces of cut brown paper sack, they made awesome "straw" for the nests.  Everyone colored birds and put them in their nests.  Now they can act out the story just like Ms. Debbie and I did!

Look at those fine motor skills - strengthening little fingers to prepare them for writing tasks as they prepare for school.

 

Our next station was making Piggie paper bag puppets.  I found the idea here.  There wasn't a pattern for them, and our paper sacks were very small, so I whipped up an outline and made copies on pink paper.  

The kiddos cut them out, and added eyes and nostrils to their piggy faces, and ta-da!  Piggie puppets!

Of course we also needed a third activity, a sensory bin.  One of the Elephant and Piggie books is Shall I Share My Ice Cream?, so Ms. Kathleen made us some ice cream dough.  She mixed a large box of baking soda with several packets of frosting mix in (just color and scent, sugar free powdered drink mix would work too), and made us pink and blue "ice cream" to play with.  We kept it in the refrigerator until it was time to play, so that it was cold too!

We pulled out ice cream scoops and some stale ice cream cones, and our friends had a great time!

I often mention that the children have different ideas for how to use things than what we envision, and this week was no exception.  One little girl played with her "ice cream" for so long that the cone began falling apart.  That was a new opportunity to explore, and she crumbled the cone and dough together for a very long time.  As I watched her, she told me she was making it into a "salad".  (I can see a lot of potential for an ice cream salad, she's brilliant!)

I turned poster board into the cover of an Elephant and Piggy book, I Am In A Book, and we took pictures of our friends in it.  When they were all done, Ms. Debbie and I had a turn too!

As the children left, we asked them to vote/graph about which character they preferred, Elephant or Piggie.

The graph is on the bottom left of our new graphing wall, and you can see for yourself which character had the most votes!  I created some posters to help parents see what we learn from this activity, and am happy to share them with you too.  They are free on my TeachersPayTeachers store, please click and download.

We'll keep building on this wall each week, always talking briefly about the results of the previous week's graph.  When we looked at our Chinese New Year graph, we noticed that there were 10 votes for dragon painting, and 10 votes for tangrams - they were equal!  We learned the sign language sign for equal, and added a great math word to our vocabularies.  I made sure that this week's graph is oriented vertically, because graphs are definitely not always horizontal.  We'll have to have some pictographs soon, and.... well, all that will have to wait.  Stay tuned, and come back next week to see what else we are getting up to at the library!

Need more Elephant and Piggie ideas?  Check out my post about Happy Pig Day  with lots more ideas about celebrating these favorite characters!

Happy Pig Day!

Oinky oink oink! 

For those of you familiar with the Elephant and Piggy books by Mo Willems, no translation is necessary, but just in case you have missed the book Happy Pig Day!, "Oinky oink oink!" means Happy Pig Day!

We love Mo Willems, and read all the Pigeon books last week, so this week we read all the Elephant and Piggy books we could find.  I have 10 of them... okay, I had 8, but bought 2 more last week in preparation for this unit.  I had to!  (I have a compulsion about children's books.  I know the first step in recovery is admitting there is a problem... but I like it, and don't want to recover!)

You should know that there are a LOT of websites with awesome ideas about how to celebrate Elephant and Piggy.  Mo Willems' official site is awesome, as is http://www.pigeonpresents.com/.  You can also see the free event kit - designed for libraries and classrooms - for Elephant and Piggy books at http://www.pigeonpresents.com/teachersguides/EandP_eventkit2013.pdf.  I found a lot of my ideas there.

This idea came from Abby the Librarian.  I printed pigeon and duckling pictures from the event kit mentioned above, and the children chose which to color.

We glued a coffee filter onto a foam bowl.  I would have preferred paper, but foam is what we had.  They tore different shades of brown construction paper, and glued them to the coffee filter on the outside of the bowl.  I cut pieces of yarn that were long enough to tie on the children's heads and under their chins.  Cut these longer than you think you need, it's better to have a little more to work with!  I showed the kiddos how to sew the yarn up into the base of the bowl and back down - this created the loop to tie it to their heads.

 We cut out their Pigeon or duckling picture, and taped it in the "nest" we'd created.  I hot glued some Easter grass and plastic eggs around the birds.  Here we are, responding to the book There's a Bird on Your Head!

Another of our favorite Elephant and Piggy books is I Am Invited To A Party! In this book, Elephant and Piggy prepare for a party - and wonder if it is a fancy party, a pool party, or a costume party.  They dress for all three at the same time!  

We prepared for all kinds of parties by mix and matching costume pieces.  The kiddos LOVED having costume play, and I love that it was also tied in to a literature unit.  These kiddos are obviously ready for a fire fighter party...

 ... any kind of costume party...

 ... a mad scientist construction worker karate party....

 ... and a fancy cheer leader party.

 We chose a picture of each child (I also have a photography problem, and take hundreds of pictures of the kiddos each week) dressed up for the party, and made a class book.  The text says: "(Name) is ready for a ______  ______ party."   Here's our cover:

Another class book we made this week was an innovation on I'm A Frog!  The children put the words "I am a...." in order and glued them at the top of their page, then completed the sentence.

 We really like to make class books, partly because the children love to read the books they've helped to make, and partly because I take advantage of this fact by having them order words, complete sentences, and illustrate their writing, so I can bind it into books.  We made a book telling what we want to do for "Happy Pig Day" - which was on Friday.

The children all wanted to dress up some more, or eat "pig food" like in the book.  Pig food doesn't sound appetizing to you?  In the illustrations to the book, Elephant and Piggy eat fruit and cookies.  Now you know the attraction!

 We made piggy hats too!  I bought a couple of sheets of neon pink poster board, and cut it into 2" strips.  (Each poster board made 11.)  The children cut out contrasting pink circles, and added nostrils.  I measured and stapled the pink strips to fit each kiddo, and trimmed several inches of extra paper from the ends.  With the extras, we were able to cut triangle ears to add to our hats.  Little piggy eye balls finished it off.  Aren't they adorable?!

Earlier in the week, when we first read Happy Pig Day!, the children noticed the confetti on the end papers, and wanted a confetti party.  I said no, real quick!  Confetti?  It would be all over the classroom.  The children would get wild and crazy and out of control.  No way! 

During the week I changed my mind.  Part of my teaching philosophy is

"When we engage children in rich experiences and make learning joyful, they learn to love learning, and become lifelong learners. To this end we must provide learning materials and experiences that are engaging and meaningful to the child."

That being said, I knew I had to provide the learning materials and the experience, because it was something meaningful to the children.  Yes, it would be all over the place, but a vacuum would fix that.  If we were going to get wild and crazy, we could do it right before heading outside to play... so we did it!  I am so glad I let the children have the confetti! 

I started by seating everyone ready for a group photo.  I showed them the bag of confetti, and told them we would have one chance to throw it for the picture.  If they threw it early, they wouldn't have any for the picture, but if they could wait, we would all have some.  We practiced throwing together (empty handed) on the count of 3, and quickly mastered it.  Everyone held out their hands for a small pile of confetti, we posed, we counted, and.... ta-da!

 The kiddos scooped it all back up, tossed it again and again, rolled in it, made snow angels in it... and I remembered being a kid.

I grew up in Australia, and confetti was a staple at weddings.  I remember my parents trying to keep me out of the used confetti on the ground afterwards, but there were always children scavenging for the colorful pieces of paper, wanting to throw it over and over.  Today my students reminded me of myself at their age, only this time I was the adult in charge, and was able to say, "Yes!"

Here they all are, laying in the spent confetti.  That $1 packet of confetti bought them at least $10 worth of joy.  I'm smiling as I think about it, and maybe you are too.  Awesome value for some tiny bits of paper!

We encouraged good behavior choices this week with piggy stamps, and this afternoon got out elephant stamps too.

We finished the week off with a Happy Pig Day snack time.  We wore our pig hats, and ate the pig food the children were writing about earlier in the day: applesauce, pink cherry juice, and cookies - no nuts (sorry Pigeon!).

 At snack time one of the kiddos asked if I would get out the corn for them to play in outside - because, he said, Piggy would like it.  What could I say.  Now the children are as happy as pigs in... corn!

Oinky oink oink!

Pigeon week - the Mo Willems books come to life!

We love the Pigeon books by Mo Willems.  In fact, we love all his books!  Children love his characters, and the simple and engaging text keeps them coming back for more.  We had to have a Pigeon week at school!

On Monday we read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!  I found a game by the same name, so we practiced some great board game skills, like counting spaces to move and taking turns as we played.  The kiddos loved it!  Okay, they love a lot of things, but they kept coming back to the game all week, so in my book, it's a hit.  Check it out here on Amazon.  (No, I don't get anything for telling you, I just share because you might want to know.)

In the book, Pigeon really wants to drive a bus, and tries all kinds of ways to persuade the reader to let him.  We didn't let him, but the kiddos were thrilled when we went outside to play, and they found the big cardboard box I had saved for them to "drive". 

We also started a set of Pigeon graphs that I made to accompany the books.  You can see the cover and several of our graphs in this picture:

On Tuesday we read The Pigeon finds a Hot Dog! and of course, we had hot dogs for lunch!  We graphed who likes/dislikes hotdogs in our class, and also which condiments we like.  Turns out, we're mostly ketchup people.  We also got to play another cool Pigeon game: Pigeon-Match-ominoes.  We played it as a bingo game, and as a dominoes game, which was super cool.

 On Wednesday, the Pigeon wanted a puppy.  We made a class book of what we would wish for, and of course, graphed about the Pigeon's ideas too.

 Thursday was cookie day - because we like cookies, just like Pigeon and Duckling do in The Duckling Gets a Cookie!?  Pigeon likes cookies with nuts, but Duckling prefers no nuts.  We graphed what we preferred, and found that most of us prefer chocolate chips and no nuts, so that's what we made!

 Don't our cookies look delicious!?  We ate the chocolate chip oatmeal cookies for snack, with a big glass of milk.  Yum!

 While reading The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? we noticed that Pigeon and Duckling have very different attitudes.  Pigeon is very emotional, and gets upset very easily.  He forgets his  manners, and melts down in every book!  Duckling on the other hand, always uses manner and a small, sweet voice.  We sorted these attitude cards, listening to both real Pigeon and Duckling quotes, as well as things I imagine both characters might say, or that my students sometimes say.  The children decided Pigeon was a bit whiny, and decided they would prefer to play with Duckling.  I'm really hoping that some of my friends will remember to use "Duckling" attitudes more often!  It seems to be working, they are already talking about ways to say things nicely, and I heard a LOT of manners when I served lunch on Friday! 

There are six total Pigeon books out now, so we had two of them on Friday: Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! and the latest book, The Pigeon Needs a Bath!  I wish I had thought to video tape the conversation about staying up late!  We graphed which of the Pigeon's excuses each child would try out on their parents, and what they thought might actually work.  Hysterical! They were comparing notes on what works, and when: apparently when they are sick, asking for a glass of water is almost always effective!  Generally speaking, they prefer to try having a nice talk - almost all the children thought that would buy them some time!  Who would have thought they had this all figured out by 4 or 5 years old?!

Our grand finale of the week was this one:

After reading, and graphing our favorite things about bath time, the children helped us to find good bath toys, and we went outside to have pretend bath play in the water table. 

We had so much fun learning with Pigeon and Duckling!  We covered a lot of math skills, between graphing, and measuring ingredients for cookies.  We wrote a couple of class books (Don't Let the Pigeon drive....  and I want a ______ cookie, please), and read and read and read.  We had sensory play, gross motor play, took turns playing games and worked on being sweet like Duckling.  We learned so much - but the children think we played all week.  Is it any wonder I love the Pigeon books too?