Furry Animals Program

Objectives

For Children

1. During the Children's Program, children will have an opportunity to listen to a well-know folktale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They will:

• recall and act out key events in the story line
• recall and use language from the text (e.g., "Trip-trap, trip-trap").

2. During the Interactive Literacy component, children will:

• look through copies of The Furry Animal Alphabet Book, and choose interesting animals to talk about. They will take turns choosing animals for the program leader to read about, help find the correct page, and listen attentively to the reading.
  
  
• play a verbal guessing game based on animal characteristics. Children will take turns posing the questions and guessing the answers. (If using the pantomime activity, children will take turns acting out animals and guessing the answers.) They will attempt to use the alphabet to provide cues, e.g., "It starts with the letter S."

For Parents/Families

1. Families will have an opportunity to observe and participate in a specific approach to reading non-fiction books with their children. In this approach, children choose the pages (or parts of pages) they want to have read to them; instead of parents trying to read every page to the child.

program leader will model these steps:

• First, look through the pictures together and talk about them, then decide on a few animals to learn more about, turn to those and read about them, repeat as long as children are interested.

2. Families will support their children's literacy learning though reciting and modeling the actions for a finger-rhyme.

3. Families will learn a technique to extend children's reading experiences through play. program leader may teach either or both of these activities for follow-up:

• Play a verbal guessing game based on information learned about animals in The Furry Animal Alphabet Book.
  
  
• Play a pantomime game with their children. The game involves facts about animal behaviors, and is related the featured book (The Furry Animal Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta).

4. Families will have an opportunity to observe and participate as their children are praised for these emerging literacy skills: listening, answering, reading, turn-taking.

5. Families will have an opportunity to practice two reading skills:

• Finding items in alphabetical order
• Using a pronunciation guide to read new words.

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