Mo Willem's Pigeon Preschool Theme

We continued preschool with more Mo Willem's books.  We love the Pigeon books he writes.  There are several we don't own, but here is what we have:

Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late!

The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

The Duckling Gets a Cookie!?

Pigeon Presents is a fun website with activities for kids and educator's.  Check out the direct link to these activities kits.

 Here is a word bubble pigeon.

 Pigeon Headband!  He wore his headband all morning even when we ran to the store.

We also made cookies in honor of "The Duckling Gets a Cookie!?"

Elephant and Piggie Preschool Theme

Today we had an Elephant and Piggie themed preschool!  My son has been requesting this theme for a little bit.  We really love the Elephant and Piggie beginner reader books written by Mo Willems.  You can find them on Amazon here.  Check out Mo Willem's site here. We do not own them all, but as you can see we own many.  We've been collecting them for about three years now.

My son has been especially interested in them lately because he has discovered that he can read the majority of the words in them and they have cute illustrations and fun humor.  Here is a comic strip printable to make your own elephant and piggie scene.

Check out Pigeon Presents for more online fun!  There is also a section for parents and educators that includes kits that have fun activities like the ones below.

We also made puppets.  I did the drawing and cutting, and my son did the gluing.  The idea came from here.

We've had a good time with these puppets making up our own elephant and piggie stories to act out.

Letter F/Frog Preschool Theme

Today we talked about the letter F and frogs!

My son asked if we could read "I'm a Frog!" by Mo Willems.  It is a cute easy-reader story.  He helped me read it in fact.

We talked about the life cycle of a frog with this printable to help use as a visual. 

 We used many activities from this Frog in the Pond Preschool Pack.

 2 Teaching Mommies has a Frog Unit printable Pack.

 My husband helped us out by folding this simple origami frog.  It does a little hopping.

 We sang "Five Green and Speckled Frogs" using these cute frogs.  We also went to Starfall and found the song there and did the letter F activities.

Mo Willems Birthday Party

My son turned 5 last week and he wanted to have a Mo Willems birthday party.  He loves anything Mo Willems writes, but most especially the pigeon books and elephant and piggie series.

 Here is the pigeon cake I made.  I used a regular oreo and a mini oreo for the eye and banana runts for the beak.

 We also had some cupcakes with images of the pigeon, Gerald, and Piggie.

 My oldest two boys helped me with the decorations.  They love drawing pigeons and making up their own stories with those characters.  Check out Pigeon Presents for a lot of printables, online games, and more fun.  The little word bubble printable you can find here.

 I placed books around the place for some added fun too and made some pigeon stick puppets.

 We had hot dogs and macaroni and cheese.  Inspired by the Pigeon of course.  I cooked my hot dogs on low in the slow cooker for 4 hours.  They tasted good.

 My oldest wanted to have bananas so we did even though no one actually ate them.  Haha...

 I made pigeon hats for all the kids to wear instead of birthday hats.

 I am no artist, but I made this sign and placed it outside the front door.

 I saw these puppets and thought they were so cute so each of the kids made those.  Then my oldest two put on a puppet show for everybody.  It was cute.

 We gave the guests cookies on their way out. Boy, was that pigeon jealous.

Write a Book- Pigeon Style

One of the activities I had planned to do this Summer was to help the boys write their own books.  They have been obsessing over the Mo Willems "Don't Let the Pigeon"  books lately.  He several.  They love "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and "Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late" among several others.  They asked me if we could do Pigeon activities so and wanted to write a book all on their own so that is what we did yesterday.

 My six year old wrote a books titled, "Don't Let the Pigeon Eat the Spider"  He came up with the idea, drew all the pictures, and sounded out all the things he wanted to say all by himself.  I was proud of him.  Here is his book.

Don't Let the Pigeon Eat the Spider

"Hey, I am the Bus Driver"

"Listen I need a spider."

"Thanks."

"Hey, can I eat a spider?"  " No."

"Please?!"  " No."

He said you can fill in whatever you want to say on this page.

(The Pigeon is going crazy now).  "Let Me eat a Spider!"

"Ought Oh."  (he sees the bus driver)

"Hey, I'm back.  Did you let the pigeon it a spider?"

Now the pigeon is day dreaming about eating a ladybug.

My four year old did his title page and came up with the idea all by himself.  The rest of the pages he asked me to write for him and I so I did.  His book is called, "Don't Let the Pigeon Play Skylanders" (which is a video game that he loves)

Don't Let the Pigeon Play Skylanders

"Kids, it's your job not to let the pigeon play Skylanders."

"Please may I play Skylanders?"  "No."

"I'll tell you what, I'll just play it quietly."  "No."

 As you can see, he didn't really come up with an ending, but we spent an hour doing this so I didn't push him to come up with a better ending.

Mo Willems is my children's new favorite author and I think any book he has written is worth checking out.  My kids went right for the section in the library that his books are kept when we went this morning.  Anything that gets them excited about books and reading, right?