Elephant and Piggie

I just love Mo Willems. His books are so stinkin' cute... especially Elephant and Piggie. I remember when I was learning to read,  my favorite character was Spot (books by Eric Hill).  The stories were composed of simple words and pictures, and I always felt so confident and happy reading through them with my mom. I see that same level of reading enthusiasm in my students when they're reading Elephant and Piggie books. They can relate to the friendship, and they giggle their way through the stories as they tackle new words and practice sight words. 

Since our current reading unit is all about character development and suggests acting out favorites, we spent two weeks reading all the Mo Willems books... Books from the Elephant and Piggie series, Cat the Cat series and Knuffle Bunny series,  among others.  (Yes, I own them all. I told you! I love his books!) 

Once we became familiar with Elephant and Piggie (and their respective personalities), we learned how to draw Elephant and Piggie and write about our favorite book in the series.  Here's a peek at what our morning work looked like:

We used these blank story pages to come up with dialogue that Elephant Gerald and Piggie might say to one another. 

Then we got a reading partner and chose which book we wanted to act out for the class. 

Once we felt confident enough with the words, it was time to make our puppets! 

I just run them on pink and gray construction paper. So easy! 

With our puppets finally done, it was time to perform!! 

I made a video of the performances, but it will take awhile to upload them. The kids did such an amazing job with this! We are moving on to Fly Guy books next!