Elephants and Piggie

They're funny!
They're silly!
They make me laugh!
They are best friends!

These are the words that some kindergarten students used to describe a couple of my favorite characters, Elephant and Piggie! This week they got the chance to hear two of Mo Willems' books, Elephants Cannot Dance! and Can I Play Too?  They quickly learned that Elephants can dance and snakes cannot catch a ball. What really made these stories fun was when the students acted out Elephant dancing and when they tried to catch a ball without using their hands.  Such simple actions caused a lot of laughter! Totally fun!

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Mo Willems Never Dissappoints

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Who can grab a PreK class' attention and keep a hold of it with very few words and hardly any pictures? You guessed it, Mo Willems. He is the fantastic author of a couple of my favorite characters, Elephant and Piggie.

 The four year olds in PreK-1 already know about Willems' pigeon on  "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus," but today I wanted to introduce them to Mo Willems' other very entertaining characters. So I pulled "I Love My New Toy!" off the shelf and as expected....the children loved it.  Something about the way Piggie and Elephant express themselves with the simplest facial changes and body language, help even the youngest of the students understand how Piggie and Elephant feel about the "broken toy."

By the end of the story several students kept repeating "break!...snap!" in unison.  To continue feeding their interest we visited Mo Willems' interactive website. Click Here to have some fun.  Thanks, Mo Willems!