Get Cozy With a Book on a Rainy Day

Today during small group time, we read the Caldecott medal-winning picture book, The Lion & the Mouse.

What's special about this book is that there are hardly any words. We must use our eyes and look at the pictures very well to understand what is happening.

From a teaching perspective, this book is wonderful for making predictions and inferences, as there are many opportunities to ask the children what they think is going on, and what they think will happen next.

If you are not familiar with the story, you can read a synopsis of it here. Essentially, it is a story of friendship and helping one another.

At the end of the story, I asked the children what their favorite part was. Here are some of their responses:

Ezra: When the mouse helped the lion.

Talia: When the lion was trapped and the mouse helped him.

Sholom: The lion let the mouse go.

Iyar: I liked when the mouse helped him get out.

Motty: The people had a jeep. There was a tire on the back. My mommy has the same thing in her car.

Max: The part with the net.

Yael: The mouse helped the lion get out of the net.

Vivian: I liked it when the mouse chopped down the net.

Asher: The mouse helping the lion.

Estelle: It was a story of a lot of animals.

Eden: All the lions.

Jonah: When the lion got trapped in the net.

Dovy: I liked the baby mouse.

Nina: I liked when the mouse chewed the net.