The Learning Curve

For a Dog Man celebration week, we had take-homes and in-library activities for the kiddos to do. This series is super popular right now and because I had never read them, I took a morning to sit down and see what they were all about which was instrumental when finding a direction for my crafts and activities.

Here's what I came up with...

1. Cloning Petey

This one was ripped straight out of A Tale of Two Kitties, where Petey orders a cloning machine and Lil Petey is born.

It's exactly played out as it is in the text.

Kids are invited to pull a whisker from Petey's cheek, insert it into the DNA chute, press the start button and open up the door on the side to see if the cloning machine worked!

Inside the machine is Lil Petey saying, "Papa?" just as he does in the book.

While this one did take some prep work, the self-directed activity props really drew kids to the table and non-Dogman fans were very interested in the cloning machine!

By having kids drop the cat whiskers inside the DNA chute, that helped me gather stats for this.

2. Repeating Patterns

This activity has no connection to Dogman other than the use of series characters. The idea came from Pinterest when I stumbled across a repeating pattern worksheet with sailboats and teddy bears.

Instead of making a worksheet, I decided to throw up my patterns on an end cap so kids could complete the patterns in the library!

.... Then I decided to also do a worksheet for kids to take home which was less work and more popular than this but hey, trial and error. Sometimes things work and sometimes they don't.

Click here for the PDF for the repeating pattern worksheet.

3. Officer Knight and Greg Organ Matching

Have you read DogMan? If YES, skip the next paragraph. If NO, read on.

The origin story of how DogMan is created is this:

Officer Knight (man) and Greg (dog) are in an explosion. At the hospital, Greg's body is dying while Officer Knight's head is dying so doctors decide to combine the two, attaching Gregs healthy head to Officer Knight's healthy body. TADA! DogMan is created.

The foundation for this activity comes from that scene.

Here's the sign that I had set out by the activity... it explains it all. 👉👉👉

SO...

For this one, I made bodies for Greg and Officer Knight with dotted spots to show where the organs would go in each.

Organs were printed out on cardstock, laminated and then magnets were glued to the back of them.

Officer Knight and Greg were taped to a magnet board and the organs stuck up there.

Kids could just match the organs where they belonged and after they left, I'd reset the board for the next kid.

It helped that this one was right in front of my desk because it got a LOT of action.

Maybe because the magnet board was on the floor propped against the table?

Either way, here is what I made for this one...

Click HERE for Officer Knight's body 💜 Click HERE for Greg's body 💜 Click HERE for their Organs

DISCLAIMER: The BODIES aren't going to print to the size but the ORGANS will. I have NO IDEA why the bodies are printing single page size. If you use them, you will have to do some tweaking to get them to the matching game size I used. Here are the JPEGs if you can make it work easier with those.

4. Finger Puppets

This page was a printable take-home and inspired from a scene in ... phooey, I forget.

The part where Petey is telling Lil Petey a story about them using finger puppets!

I had meant to add dotted lines around the characters, showing where to cut but forgot.

5. Book Display

The font used for my display signs is called Rainbow by Kiara Billioners and can be accessed HERE.

Hope these activities and printables help you in your DogMan planning! Let me know how your group likes them 😁

💚💛💜

After our good morning songs, we started right into our topic! Elephants.

Play Pretend: Be An Elephant

We began by talking about the special features of an elephant - their trunks, their feet, their ears and we acted out different elephant movements.

These were: trumpet our nose, make our noises, flap our ears and swing our trunks to the floor

BOOK: Meet Miss Fancy by Irene Latham

This one is a picture book written by an Alabamian author that's loosely based on a real event. It's set in 1913 while the south had many segregation laws.

ACTION RHYME: A Big Grey Elephant

A big grey elephant walks around

Stomping, stomping, stomping the ground.

When it gets too hot, he'll flap his ears

And this cools him down from feet to rear.

His tail waggles, he feels so relaxed.

Time to eat, there's a perfect spot of grass.

His grey trunk reaches down to the floor.

Swishing right, then left then right some more.

He grabs some grass, brings it up to his mouth

And you know what he says?

Mmm Mmm Mmm that's yummy.

Alright, this may not be amazing or easy to memorize on the spot (I read it off a piece of paper and I'm the one who wrote it!) but the actions are fun to do!

BOOK: Strictly NO ELEPHANTS by Lisa Mantchev

QUESTION: If you could have any type of animal in the world for a pet, what animal would that be?

In Strictly NO ELEPHANTS, a little boy has a pet elephant and other children have other unique pets. This was the perfect opportunity to share what types of crazy pets our group would like to have!

SONG: The Elephant (Tune: The Mulberry Bush)

The elephant goes like this and that, this and that, this and that (walk heavily)

The elephant goes like this and that, cause he's so big and fat! (Puff up cheeks and stretch out arms)

He has no fingers and has no toes, e has no fingers and has no toes (wiggle fingers/toes)

He has no fingers and has no toes, but goodness gracious what a nose! (make trunk with arms at nose)

And those were all the elephant themed books and songs we did for this one! Happy Storytelling

💚💛💜