Activities for Teachers with Hans Wilhelm’s books

For activities with NOODLES
books please click on image.

Wake Up, Sun!

Written by David L. Harrison
Illustrated by Hans Wilhelm

Interactive suggestions by Maryann Harman

Identify the punctuation marks.
How can you tell someone is speaking?
How many other animals are in the barn? Count them.
What are they doing? Opposites – sleep/awake
How do they feel? Dog is happy; pig is grumpy; How do you know?

To get children to pay attention to details, ask questions about the pictures:
How many windows in the barn?
What shape are they?
Could there be another animal in barn that you are not seeing? Help them here by directing them to look at wheel near rhombus shaped window. Cobwebs.
Deductive reasoning – must be a spider somewhere.
How do you know farmer is talking and not wife?
How does the wife feel?
Why do they think the baby woke the sun?
How many times is the dog with the baby?
What new animals do you see? (frog)
Why is the picture at the end funny? (saddle on cow)
These questions force them to look more deeply into the story for clues, which will aid later on in chapter books or history/science books. Teaches them to look beyond just what is there.

All For the Best!

By Hans Wilhelm
Hampton Road Publishers

Interactive suggestions by Barbara Klein and Hans Wilhelm

This book has extreme vibrant illustrations. You might want to have the kids notice the illustrations, It might be a great time to bring out the watercolors during a free choice time, and see if the children can use watercolors like Hans Wilhelm does!

For older kids this would be a good book to discuss the Author’s Purpose – or author’s message. Lead book discussions by asking questions such as:

What did the author want the reader to walk away with after reading this book?

What is important to this author?

Have you ever had an experience that started off bad but turned out good in the end?

Notice the different strong emotions of the town people versus the carpet weaver.

How do all the figures and animals in the carpet design on the last page connect with the story?

I’ll Always Love You

By Hans Wilhelm
Crown/Random House Publishers

This classic invites discussions on the subject of death.
Allow the children to draw a person or a pet that the child “will always love”. Let them make special a frame for the picture.
It is a great story for a private read to a child who is just now dealing with the loss of a pet.
(P.S. You may want to have some paper tissues handy for yourself. HW)

Hello Sun!

By Hans Wilhelm
Carolrhoda Books

Interactive suggestions by Barbara Klein

This book would work very well for a story retelling, especially if the children are already familiar with this skill. It has a strong story line, and all the story elements are very clear. One way I might do this would be to make a large chart, and fill it in together with the kids:

Characters:
Setting:
Problem:
Events:
Solution:

After filling it in, kids can chose one of these story elements to illustrate. Then it can be combined to make a new book- a retold version of your story!

Another way I have done story retells is to break the kids into 5 small groups (2-3 kids in a group work the best for this). Each group is responsible for one story element. Give each small group a sentence strip; they can put down the information; then they can add some small pictures that go along with their words. For instance, one group works on Characters. They write down all the characters who were in the book—Quentin hedgehog, Charlie Rabbit, Owl, Fox, Squirrel, Beaver, etc. and can add little illustrations. After they have finished, call the class together, and have each small group share out their work, following the story retell format above. Glue down each sentence strip on a large chart paper alongside each story element they are representing. (If there are a lot of kids in the class, you can have 2 small groups working on each story element, so you can create 2 versions. You probably want only 2 or 3 kids to work together, for best management). This really reinforces Story elements, and makes a wonderful display, too.

Hiccups for Elephants

Written by James Preller
Illustrated by Hans Wilhelm
Scholastic

Before reading:
Show the book cover to the class without reading the title. Ask children to guess who has the hiccups. How do they know? (The word HICCUPS is coming from the elephant; animals surrounding the elephant are smiling while the elephant looks dismayed.) Point out the speech balloon. Tell children to look for it as they read the book.

After reading:
Ask children to comment on the book.
What did they like best about it? Have children point out the parts that made the book fun to read. Then ask: Were you surprised by the ending? What were you expecting to happen?

What a character! (Reading—Fantasy vs. Reality):
Discuss which animal in the story children liked best. Have children give examples from the book of why they chose this animal. Then ask children to discuss the way the illustrator portrayed this animal. Would the animal behave this way in real life? Why or why not? Ask children to point out the elements in the story that could not happen in real life.