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14 Lesson Ideas to Use with Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie Books. 

Mo Willems authors an AMAZING series of 25+ books for early readers starring Elephant and Piggie characters. Written in comic book style, these books show conversations of friendships and feelings and problem solving. This article delves into some of the teaching concepts revealed in these great stories. Then you can create customized visuals to use with your favorite Elephant and Piggie Stories. Play games with story vocabulary, hunt for common sight words, act out stories with stick puppets, or write a possible ending  to a story problem. 

  

Upload photos of the illustrations to use lesson activities. For example, sequence scenes from the beginning, middle, and at the end. 

 

1. How to Play

Elephant and Piggie show us fun ways to play with a friend. Explore how these great friends play together. Do you play differently inside than outside?

In the book, "I Am A Frog", Piggie shows Gerald how to pretend. After reading this book, pretend to be different animals. Pick a card and show how the animal moves. Play a game of charades (guess the animal), or play Headbandz with different animals. 

 

Here are some books that model play skills. 

Role play playing scenarios and how to play with a friend. Talk about types of play and games with rules. What are the rules for a game of Dots and Boxes? 

Here are some activities to help teach play skills. 

   

 

2. Try and Persevere

Elephant and Piggie teach the importance of trying, and not giving up. 

Teaching students to perservere is a challenging task. Look for inspirational non-fiction stories of people who overcame difficult challenges. Here are some ideas to promote "trying" from the Sharing Center. 

 

Can you make Gerald or Piggie? You can TRY!

 

3. Concept of Not

Some students can be taught and modeled the concepts of "not" and/ or opposites. It may be especially helpful to model "not" with students who use a communciation board as a way of expressing perosnal opinions. 

Elephant and Piggie books model "not" in many of their stories. 

Here are some activitie to help teach the concepts of "not".(Click on the image to see how to use this material and download.)

  

Mo Willems rarely uses contractions. What words can you combine with "not" to make a contraction? Do you know other contractions? 

 

 

4. Concepts of Time

Mo Willems trickles in concepts of time in his fun books. Charaters model words such as before, now, and later. They mention time words of today, tomorrow, next week, month, and year. Characters use verb tenses to illlustrate when something happened or will happen. 

Here are some activities that relate to concepts of time. (Click on the material to learn more and download.)

     

 

5. Feelings

Mo Willems books are filled with expressive illutrations showing a range of feelings in both facial expressions and body language. As you read a story, stop and consider how each character feels. Note when the characters may have different feelings and reactions to the same thing.

Print 2 copies of the Elephant and Pig feelings cards to play matching games and talk about feelings.

Here are Elephant & Piggie books that deal with strong feelings.  

There are thousands of great activities about feelings in the LessonPix Sharing Center. Here are just a few to use with these stories.  

    

Draw feelings faces on pink and grey balloons! 

 

6. Size

Elephant and Piggie often look at the size of things and compare: bigger and smaller. 

Here are some size comparison activities: 

  

"A Big Guy Took My Ball" is a great story for teaching comparatives and perspectives. 

 

And throughout all of the books, consider the size of the problem. It seems Gerald makes a big deal out of problems. 

 

 

7. Wait

Waiting is a skill that takes time and maturity. These stories use the word, "wait" in a variety of different contexts. 

Here are visuals and activities to help teach students the concept of waiting. 

      

 

8. Positions and Prepositions

Working on positions or prepositions? Elephant and Piggie model for young readers. For example, after reading Elephants Cannot Dance, kids can create their own dance moves and write them down. Play Simon Says or body position Bingo to practice body awareness, motor planning, and listening.

    

Here are some great Elephant and Piggie stories to work on positions and prepositions. 

Check out these ideas from the Sharing Center. 

   

 

Learn how to make your own Elephant and PIggie. Follow these directions from Tombow. Cut out shapes and glue ON the pieces. 

 

9 Inference

Inferencing is a difficult skill to teach and requires many opportunties to practice. As you read Mo Willems' books, you can see clues in illustrations or expressive pauses in the story that show something will happen. As you read, take a pause to guess what may happen next or what could happen. 

Here are some visuals to help teach inferencing skills. 

  

 

10 Problem Solving

Often in these stories, there is a simple and clear problem that Gerald and/or Piggie must figure out. Together the reader and the characters find a solution(s). Here are some stories that promote problem solving.  

Here are some resources to promote problem solving skills. 

  

 

11 Manners

The characters in these stories model kindness and manners. They say please, excuse me, and sorry in most books.

Look through the books. Can you find examples of good manners? Make a jar and fill with pom poms every time you see an examples of good manners. When the jar is full - celebrate with a dance party, treat, or favorite game.

Here are some books that show positive examples of manners. 

Here are some materials form the sharing center to teach manners. 

  

 

12 Question Words

The comic books style of Elephant and Piggie books model turn taking and question - answers speech. Look at the questions posed in the book. In "Waiting is Not Easy", Gerald asks descriptive questions to guess his surprise. "Is it pretty?" "Can we share it?" Make your own guessing game and ask questions to figure it out. 

  

Here are some examples of questions in the books: 

Check out these resources from the Sharing Center. 

     

 

13 Perspective

Mo Willems does a terrific job showing simple content from different perspectives. And different people may view the same situation differently. For example, some people love to go really fast and others may be too scared. 

In "I Will Surprise Me Friend", Gerald and Piggie don't see each other from different sides of a rock. Then their personalities show when they each consider what happened to the other. Gerald worries and Piggie is hungry! Use puppets or props to role play different perspectives from the story. 

Here are some ideas to promote the concept of perspectives and differences. 

  

 

14. Sight Words / Core Words

Core vocabulary words are the most common words used in language. (Learn more about core) Many of these core words are sight words - words used so frequently that we can read them at a quick glance. (will, you, go, with, me) Because Mo Willems uses simple speech and few words per page, you can easily spot these common words in the story. 

Here are just a few books and focus core words. 

Students with speech and/or language delays benefit from a core board. The type of core board varies according to the level and needs of the children. Here is a free sample. 

When teaching core vocabulary, focus on 1-2 words and build from there. For example: While reading "I Am Going", focus on the word "Go". ("ready to start reading? let's go!") Then ephasize "go" throughout the day. ("let's go eat", "go to the bathroom", "go outside", "ready, set, go!"). Play with toy cars or make a electronic toy, "go!". Play read light, green light as stop and go. 

 

Mo Willems does an amazing job with all of his books. And there are so many more fun ways to explore and learn early concepts. With the help of Elephant and Piggie, children can grow and learn and enjoy friendships.