m is for mama… our story

Our Themes this time are Mothers who are celebrating Mother’s Day this week, quirky families, appreciating differences as well as appreciating spots, stripes, patterns and elephants!

Our Habits of Mind focuses this time:

Thinking Flexibly – being able to change perspectives, generate alternatives and consider options.

Finding Humour – finding the whimsical, incongruous and unexpected; being able to laugh at oneself.

Creating, Imagining and Innovating– generating new and novel ideas, originality and fluency.

Questions to guide your discussion: Children will enjoy pausing this story at times so that they can do some slow looking and really study some of the pictures to enable them to think about and enjoy what is happening.

Tell me about the story. What do you like about it? Who are the characters? Is it a true story or make-believe? Could it be true? Why or why not?

Why did the family do what they did? How are the characters in the story different? How are they the same?

Who in your family makes you laugh? How do they do that?

Does your Mama or Granny make you laugh? What do you do to make them laugh?

Does everyone in your family like the same things? Is it okay to like different things? Are people who think differently interesting?

The little boy in the story really likes elephants. Is there something that you really like? Do you think you’ll still like it when you grow up? Why?

Can you identify any of our Habits of Mind this time in the story?

If you close your eyes can you remember any of the special elephants that the little boy had in his room? You can have another peek if you need to. How many things can you remember?