Woof! Woof!: The focus of this lesson is to reinforce the concept of working together through teamwork by encouraging participation in fun literacy and cognitive activities.
Teaching with Clifford’s Big Idea: Work Together
When children learn how to successfully interact and share common goals with other children, they gain valuable social skills. Learning how to work with others comes most often from observation and personal experience.
Teach: Lost and Found!
Objective: The following activity nurtures essential:
- social and emotional skills
- language and literacy skills
Discuss the concept of working together and teamwork. Explain that when friends work together, good things can happen! Share feelings associated with losing a favorite toy. Encourage children to take turns relating their own experiences with losing something special. Show children the illustrations from Clifford’s Busy Week by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic). Read and discuss. Check for comprehension by having children retell the story and identify characters. Finally, ask children to give this story a new title and talk about how Emily Elizabeth and Clifford worked as a team to find Clifford’s lost toy, Squeaky.
Practice: Teamwork Train!
Objective: The following activity nurtures essential:
- fine motor skills
- cognitive skills
- creative expression through music skills
Help children recognize basic geometric shapes found in a train by showing them pictures or drawing a model. Provide children with shape patterns, pencil, scissors, colored paper, and glue. Use rectangles for boxcars, circles for wheels, and a cylinder for the smokestack. After shapes are traced and cut, help children cooperatively build a train along a classroom wall or chalkboard. Have children sign and date their boxcars. Substitute children’s names as you sing and clap to the old railroad tune She’ll (child’s name) Be (will be) Coming Around the Mountain...when she/he comes!
Extend: Working together to gather and record information can be a fun and valuable learning experience!
- Help children create a “Lost and Found” journal by describing, drawing, and cataloging information about lost items in the classroom or school. Have children update the journal weekly and give a short report on new items lost and found.
- Explore trains of yesterday and today to help children discover the history and importance of one of America’s oldest means of transportation.
Clifford’s Library: These books support Clifford’s Big Ideas and reinforce valuable early literacy skills:
- Clifford’s Big Book of Stories by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic)
- Shapes and Sizes (Clifford the Big Red Dog Workbook) by Dina Anastasio (Scholastic)
- Subjects:Conflict Resolution, Character Education, Cooperation and Teamwork, Arts and Crafts, Literacy, Geometry, Math through Literature, Early Social Skills, Motor Skills, Shapes and Sizes, Songs and Rhymes, Music, Kindness and Compassion, Manners and Conduct, Respect, Tolerance and Acceptance, Friends and Friendship, Understanding Self and Others, Shyness
- Skills:Listening Comprehension
