School-Age: Lions

This week we featured a few more books that were nominated as part of our state's children's book awards vote. Since two of the nominees that the kids could vote for were about lions, we learned about lions and read both books aloud!

1. Reading
The first book we read was "Lion Lessons" by Jon Agee. This is a hilarious picture book about a lion trying to teach a young boy how to be a lion in 7 easy lessons.

2. Discussion
We discussed some fun facts about lion behavior and I shared a variety of pictures of lions. It was a fairly short discussion but some of the kids were very into big cats so they were a rapt audience.


3. Reading
Our second lion book nominee was "Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion" by Alex T. Smith. It was a cute retelling of Little Red Riding Hood and the illustrations are bright and cheerful.

4. Craft
We made our own lion masks out of paper plates. I cut large holes in the middle of paper plates and used scraps of construction paper for the kids to glue around the edge of the plates to make their lion manes. Then we taped a jumbo craft stick to the back of the plate so that the kids could hold the plate up to their faces as their own lion mane. 

5. Reader's Theatre
We had a slight reader's theatre activity using our lion's manes. I took some of the lion lesson activities from "Lion Lessons" and had the kids act them out with their manes.


Notes:
I think the greatest thing about being able to read books aloud to kids on a regular basis is that I find a greater appreciation for some of the books I might have overlooked otherwise. There are books that I read, felt were nice enough, but when I read them to kids and see how much the kids LOVE them, I re-evaluate my own opinion of them.