Elephant & Piggie Party

Last night 15 kindergarten and first graders had a wonderful time celebrating the hilarious Elephant & Piggie characters created by children’s author, Mo Willems. It was interesting to see that all but two of huge kids were boys and boy were they excited about the party! I first started the program as I do all of my children’s programming in the library with a read aloud… In this case I actually read three stories! I started with There Is a Bird on Your Head!. This is probably one of my favorite Elephant & Piggie stories because the kids just think it’s so funny and giggle uncontrollably. Then I read, Elephants Cannot Dance Piggie tries to teach Elephant to dance, but in the end realizes that there is no “right” way to dance. And finally, I shared the newest story in the series, I Am a Frog. This is a great story to share about the importance of imagination and pretending and e kids were so excited to hear it!

After all those stories the kids were definitely ready to move. We first practiced balancing a nest with plastic Easter eggs on our heads. I made the nests out of brown craft paper and the kids did a great job balancing the nests on their heads as they walked around the room. Then we hand a dance party and did the Hokey Pokey, a little difficult with 5 and 6 year olds, but we did it! After our dance party, we created Elephant or a Piggie brown bag puppets. I found the brown bag puppets from a blog but ended up creating my own patterns from the pictures provided. The kids had the chance to practice scissor skills, use glue sticks, and decorate their puppets. The kids had a great time and we were able to finish everything in about 45 minutes (including a snack)!