Word Wall Literature - From Head to Toe

I began reading From Head to Toe because it was another book written by the great Eric Carle and children could participate in it as a shared reading. If you are new to this book, each page begins with an animal doing an action with their body and asking the child on the right side of the page, if they can do it. Here is a sample of the text from the two page spread.

"I am a penguin

and I turn my head.

Can you do it?

I can do it!"

As the reader continues you meet a giraffe that can bend it's neck, a buffalo that can raise it's shoulders, a monkey that can wave it's arms, a seal that can clap it's hands, a gorilla that thumps it's chest, and more. If you have spent any time with kindergartners than you can imagine all the movement THEY actually do while listening and interacting with this book. After I moved it to our buddy reading box I was wondering why our reading time seemed a bit louder than normal and realized while they were reading this title they are doing each of the actions. I believe they were more successful with their own reading because they were moving. I've been doing some more thinking about movement and literature and will share that with you soon.

This book was a great book to revisit and use when we were studying the word can for our word wall. It's located in two repetitive phrases, one on each page. The illustrations are done in Eric Carle's classic style and it's interesting how he shows the action the animal and child do.