Rainbow Connection: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Monday, April 22, 2013

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Are wolves really so big and bad? We read quite a few fairy tales like The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and Peter and the Wolf. These tales had us convinced that wolves are pretty bad. Then we read Walk with a Wolf by Jannie Hakker and found out they're not at all like the fairy tales have them characterized. We had fun with the fairy tales, though!

We put on a puppet show of "The Three Little Pigs". We each took turns playing different parts.

Here come the pigs!

It's the wolf!

On our sticky board, we had to decide which materials would build the best house- straws, sticks or bricks?

House shapes and collage materials helped us to create some houses that are "wolf-proof".

It was fun to practice huffing, puffing and blowing like the big, bad wolf. First we used straws and cotton balls for practice. We huffed and puffed and blew the cotton balls across the table.

Then, we used eyedroppers to drop paint on our papers and straws to blow the paint. The process created some interesting artwork. All that blowing was hard work. We don't know how the wolf did it!

We watched a presentation of Peter and the Wolf and then moved on to make musical instruments representative of the characters in the story. We used different sizes of boxes and rubber bands to make a stringed instrument representing Peter. Different sounds were made depending on the size of the box and how far the rubber bands were stretched.

We blew into toilet paper tubes with waxed paper over an opened end to make sounds representative of the bird (a flute) and the cat (clarinet).

We blew across the top of empty bottles to make the sounds of grandfather (bassoon), duck (oboe) and the wolf (french horn).

An empty container was our timpani,

representing the hunters.

We had fun experimenting with the different sounds we could make.

As we listened to the story again as it was read to us,

we "painted" the story. We had feathers for the bird and the duck, small paw prints for the cat, large paw prints for the wolf, sponge stamps for Peter and his grandfather and a boot for the hunters.

We read two different renditions of "Little Red Riding Hood". The first was the tale we are all familiar by Candice Ransom.

The second was Little Red Riding Hood: A Newfangled Prairie Tale by Lisa Campbell Ernst.

Both stories had happy endings but gave us a good chance to talk about the dangers of talking to strangers.

We made muffins just like the ones Little Red took to her grandma's house!

YUM!

Wolf masks were created using homemade puff paints. We squirted a variety of colors on our mask shapes and then placed them in the microwave to puff up the paint. We loved the product, but the process was loads of fun.

Last, but not least, we left the fantasy world of wolves to read Walk with a Wolf by Jannie Hakker

and learn about the real world of wolves

and how they live.

Wolves live in families called "packs". When dad and mom are away hunting, the "children" or cubs are left with babysitters like aunts and uncles. We talked about how we live in families and we each drew a picture of our family.

We had a big box to play in. It was our wolf "den" where we lived as a family and took care of our wolf cubs.

Wolves have a great sense of smell. We used our sense of smell to experiment with smell jars. Each was filled with something with a familiar scent like oranges, chocolate, cinnamon, coffee... We sniffed the jars and tried to guess what the scent was.

Wolves also have a great sense of hearing. We played a game with things that make different sounds. We had to try to guess what they were by the sound that they made.

Wolves also have an amazing sense of sight. We went for an "I Spy...Like a Wolf" scavenger hunt. We had to use our sharp wolf eyes to find the things listed.