2-5 story time: New Elephant and Piggie!

Today's not-so-subtle lesson- when you're filling in for an absent co-worker, keep it simple!

My esteemed co-worker and I had planned to celebrate having received the new Elephant and Piggie books by reading them- in tandem, naturally. I was to be Piggie. She was to be Elephant.

I get a message on Thursday: My co-worker will not be joining me that day. But the show must go on!

Attempts to replace her with an elephant puppet were not successful- too hard to hold the book at the same time. Especially while also trying to manipulate squirrel puppets hastily made out of printed-out stock photos and pencils.

Everyone was much more receptive (everyone meaning all seven of them) during the next session, when I decided to leave elephant sitting beside me and allowed myself to really get into the stories (Yelling and screaming and sobbing loudly- all essential to a well-read Mo Willems). Elephant was much more effective waving to people with his trunk and eating people's hands afterward, anyway.

I mixed in some other Willems, as the younger group seemed restless on just Elephant and Piggie (and for the older group...well...I'd gotten it into my mind to read Knuffle Bunny Too and there was just no going back...)

Haven't written much about songs lately- I found a good one.

Laurie Berkner is my hero. Her music students must be some lucky kids. On her Whaddya Think of That album she has a song that might be really tame ("These are my glasses, this is my book.."about putting on your glasses and reading a book, of all things. I think I've seen it as a finger play somewhere).

But the way she introduces the motions on the cd- she has you opening up your "book" hands and finding purple dinosaurs and pink snakes and the kids just loved it (and what's more we're subversively teaching them that what you find in books is fun.) I did it for the second time this time around and they still loved it. What's more I'm doing it a capella because our cd players are both on the fritz.

For the "read read read" and "look look look" part of the song I also did the American sign language sign for "read" (running your righ v fingers down your left hand) because hey, I felt like they should be doing something there. And I got to say "Guess what kids, you're all doing Sign Language!" at the end. Big hit, fun for me too- just have to come up with more silly scary things to find in the books when I open it.