Virtual Kids Book Club Post - Activities for two of David McPhail's books

I've been watching the Virtual Book Club for Kids for a while and I figure it is time for me to participate in it. Each month they feature one author. This month is it David McPhail, and everyone is encouraged to post up a blog post about an activity, craft or book inspired project based on one or more of David McPhail's books. We read the books Waddles as well as the book Pig Pig Meets the Lion.

One of the pictures within the Waddles inspired us to do a craft cutting papers and assembling a park scene.

Pig Pig Meets the Lion highlights prepositions. I was pleased about that because my two oldest children and I are reading Grammar Island, by Michael Clay Thompson together, and talking about the eight types of words. After we read the story, I took a sheet of construction paper and made a pile of cards each with a preposition on it and we made a collaborative story of the Lion's next adventure, running away to Cow Cow's house after he leaves Pig Pig's house. Each of us drew one card and created a sentence using that preposition.

 My youngest child, now two, was delighted with the book Pig Pig Meets the Lion. The limited amount of text per page and the pictures showing everyday furniture allowed her to really relate to it. Afterwards we used play-mobile to practice using the prepositions. We could move items around and say, is the cat on the volcano or under it?

Although David McPhail has authored a great number of wonderful books, in my mind he's always still associated with Dennis Lee. My first introduction to his illustrations was in the book Bubblegum Delicious by Dennis Lee, and I've blogged before about activities we've done with the poetry of Dennis Lee.