Puppy Puppet

Jun 8, 2022

I shared a puppy drawing, art project and game with you recently and today want to tell you about a great picture book for shared reading - Big Dog Little Dog by Sally Rippin and illustrated by Lucinda Gifford.

Big Dog learns about compromise and the delight of playful company when Little Dog moves in. At first he does not like the change to his daily routine, but by the end of the story Big Dog and Little Dog are spending lovely long days together.

I read it today to some little emergent readers. I used it as a springboard to talk about:

the sight words 'big' and 'little' which are appearing in their instructional readers at the moment
making connections as we read, and after we read
how characters change in a text
antonyms / opposites

We also wrote a sentence together afterwards for guided writing and made some puppets.

Before I implemented the shared reading of the picture book we explored the cover and illustrations to get a feel for the characters. The pages show lots of things Big Dog does through his day and here you could chart a list of verbs as you go:

run
dig
lie
walk
chase
roll
beg
jump
wag
sleep
wait
chew

Also before reading we talked about how the dogs looked in the pictures and using only the illustrations I asked the boys to make some predictions about what the dogs were feeling, doing and how they were changing as the pages progressed.

After reading (and confirming/correcting predictions as we went) I asked them some comprehension questions:

What is the story about?
Where did the story take place?
What happened?
Who were the main characters?
What was the main problem in the story?
What do you think about how Big Dog treated Little Dog?
How does Big Dog feel at the end of the story?

With the dog and puppy puppets you can encourage your learners to retell the story, or make up their own! Simply color or paint, cut and attach them to craft sticks. Model some simple story lines to get them going and let their imaginations take hold!