We had lots of book inspired fun this week with Are You Ready to Play Outside? by Mo Willems as part of the Summer Virtual Book Club!
In this Elephant and Piggie book, the two friends are excited to go outside and play together. When it begins to rain. Piggie is very dismayed and complains that now they can't have any fun. Luckily, some cute worms stumble onto the pages. The worms are having a wonderful time in the rain, splashing and playing together. Piggie decides that perhaps she can have fun outside, too. When it stops raining, Piggie is disappointed, but Gerald saves the day by spraying water on her with his trunk. This book teaches wonderful lessons about enjoying ourselves no matter our circumstances. And on an even simpler level....playing outside in all kinds of weather is AWESOME!
My sons love to read the Piggie and Elephant books together. We brought the book OUTSIDE and they took turns reading parts and shared the story with their little sister.
After reading the story, we did 3 fun activities.
WORM RACES
FIRST we went on a hunt for WORMS to play with!
Once we found our worms, we were ready for learning and exploration. We talked about why worms loved the rain, how they helped our plants grow, (and why they could survive when one of the children accidentally cut one in half while we were digging). We measured them and observed them with magnifying glasses.
Then we were ready for our WORM RACES!!!
We drew a large circle on the driveway and poured water in it, so the worms would be safe and stay wet!
We placed the worms in the center of the circle.
Then we watched our worms move! One little guy was super fast! The kids cheered "Go worm, go!" like we were at a game. They really got into it!
After our races, the kids carried each worm back to the safety of the backyard where we had "recruited" them from for the races.
ELEPHANT OUTSIDE WATER PLAY
After playing in the dirt, the kids pretended to be Gerald the Elephant and sprayed each other with these fun water cannons.
Wormy Dirt Pudding
We dried off and came in to make this worm themed snack together.
Ingredients: Chocolate Pudding (follow directions on box), Oreo cookies, gummy worms
Of course we went back OUTSIDE to eat them!
We are thrilled to be part of the Summer Virtual Book Club with these fabulous Bloggers!
BeingAConsciousParent
Make sure you link up below. Then you can add this button to your own blog! If you don't have a blog, leave your ideas in the comments, if you'd like. I would love to hear about what great Mo Willems inspired activities you did with your little ones.
9 comments:
Such cute activities! Especially love the worm races!!
I love all of the connections you made to the book! We're headed to the library later to return our first group of Mo Willems books and check out some more. Definitely checking for this one. :)
I too got a kick out of the worm races! :)
I love your worm ideas. Especially the worm race. : )
Oh! I love these activities. Two of the things on our summer list are reading outside and making "dirt cake". Now we have a great book to match!
Love your ideas!!!
I've been wondering about worm racing ever since we saw that worm racing episode of Curious George on PBS! So now that I've seen it in real life- it's going to happen at our house!!! what fun :) (LOVE elephant and piggy)
I love this!!! I am a few days late on seeing this post, but thank you for the ideas!!!
I just wanted to tell you that I love all of your book activities. You do such a great job providing fun activities to go along with the books you read, and your blog is truly a great resource.
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