Each of us will be posting about a book from the same author on the third Monday of the month and co-hosting a link party for you to share your own books and activities from this author. The authors we have picked are Mo Willems for June, Don and Audrey Wood for July and Kevin Henkes for August. We are hoping this will help to keep us all motivated to include reading in our busy summer plans and help keep the summer slide away from our kids. Will you join us in sharing?
We have had so much fun exploring Mo Willems books this month!! It was hard for us to choose one book to share with you. I must admit the only exposure we had to Mo Willems before this book club was a story time at a local museum, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. One of the few we went to they read Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems. Then the kids did a neat craft. They gave them a black and white picture and had the kids paint on them similar to the pictures in the book. Well we re-read Knuffle Bunny as well as the two sequels to it. Hazel loved them all! We also did a quick picture similar to what we did at the museum. This time we used dot markers instead of paints because they were already out. I got the black and white picture here.
Ok, now onto the book we are suppose to be sharing about. We said we would pick one of the Piggie and Elephant series. Well, we have had a hard time picking just one. I think we have six out of the library and have loved all six of them. I do think Hazel's favorite right now is Elephants Cannot Dance, but she also loves We Are in a Book!
After I took this picture I realized the one about sharing ice cream was not there. Of course our homemade ice cream would be a perfect activity for this one, but since we already shared that activity we have another to share. We decided the fun think to do would be to make Piggie and Gerald (the elephant) masks so we could act out some of the books. To do this we started with painting two paper plates--one grey and one pink. Then I cut holes for the eyes. Oh, and we glued some pipe cleaners on as glasses for Gerald. Next we took one of Steve's old grey socks and put a small amount of stuffing in it for Gerald's trunk. I cut a slit in the plate and stuck the sock through it. Then Hazel glued one bump from an egg carton to be Piggie's snout. We added some glitter glue for her nostrils and for both of their mouths and glued on construction paper ears. We used black for Gerald because we didn't have any grey on hand. Then Hazel really wanted them to have strings (I was hoping to glue them on tongue depressors and have them be the hold up type). Since Hazel was really insistent on wanting strings, I punched holes in them and tied stretchy string to them.
Then of course we tried them on. I put a larger string on Piggie so that mask fits me better and Gerald fits Hazel better, but of course we tried both on each of us.
Next we started acting out Elephants Cannot Dance. In this book, Piggie in her tutu wants to teach all of her friends how to dance. Gerald informs her that elephants cannot dance. She doesn't believe him so he shows her it in a book. Then she says that he can always try. Gerald then gets excited to try but of course does not have much success. He feels like a failure and gets sad. Then their other friends show up telling Piggie they are ready for their lessons. Piggie says she cannot teach them since her friend is so sad. The other friends say they don't want Piggie to teach them because they want to learn The Elephant. Then everyone tries to dance how Gerald danced and they all have fun.
Now Hazel loves to dance around the house or a store or any open space, so she loves this book. Next time we act this one out, I'm going to have her be Piggie and wear her tutu.
We will also be acting out some of the other books. Plus stay tuned this week for sharing more ideas to go with other Mo Willems books. I also hope you will visit all my other co-hosts and see what their creative ideas are for the book they chose.
Now it is your turn to share a craft or activity for a Mo Willems book. I hope you are enjoying them as much as we are!!
This is where I share...
