- strong
MA Standards:
English Language Arts/Literature/RL.PK.MA.1 With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about a story or a poem read aloud.
Head Start Outcomes:
Literacy Knowledge/Book Appreciation and Knowledge Asks and answers questions and makes comments about print materials.
Logic and Reasoning/Reasoning and Problem Solving Classifies, compares, and contrasts objects, events, and experiences.
PreK Learning Guidelines:
English Language Arts/Reading and Literature 10 Engage actively in read-aloud activities by asking questions, offering ideas, predicting or retelling important parts of a story or informational book.
Read Together: The Three Little Javelinas #2
© Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Early Education and Care (Jennifer Waddell photographer). All rights reserved.
STEM Key Concepts: How you design and build a structure helps determine how strong it will be; Different materials are useful for making different structures and different parts of structures; Walls, roofs, and bridges need to be supported in special ways
ELA Focus Skills: Active Listening, Recall and Retell, Story Comprehension, Sequencing, Vocabulary
Before You Read
Pick up The Three Little Javelinas and have children read the title with you. Ask children what they remember about the story and the javelina's houses.
As You Read
Read the story again. Hold the book so everyone can see the pictures as you read. Pause occasionally to make comments about the story or to point out desert features and animals in the art.
- Encourage children to “read” recurring phrases such as, “Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” “Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin,” “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in,” and “He huffed, and he puffed . . . .”
- Point to the first pig’s tumbleweed house. Ask, What do you notice about the tumbleweed house? Why do you think it was easy for the coyote to blow this house away?
- Point to the third javelina’s finished house and ask, How is this house different from the others? How does this help it from being blown over?
After You Read
Talk with children about the story. Ask questions to help them make connections between the pigs’ houses and the structures they have built. For example ask,
- What could the first javelina have done to make his house strong?
- Who would have had an easier time building a second floor to his house? Why?
Take It Further: Prompt children to raise questions about how environments determine how homes are built.Talk about the dry, hot dessert environment. Then ask, Why do you think the javelina didn’t make a slanted roof? Guide children to conclude that because the desert has so little rain, the house doesn’t need a slanted roof.