If you add one new Valentine picture book to your collection this year… let it be this one…
CuPIG: The Valentine’s Day Pig by Claire Tattersfield and illustrated by Rob Sayegh Jr. is equal parts silly, feel-good & adorable. Cupid (I mean, CuPIG) has a hard time getting her arrows to land in the right place on a stormy Valentine’s Day. As a result, Cupig accidentally breaks up some very known pairs (ya know… like needle & thread/salt & pepper) and unintentionally rematches them with some silly suggestions that will have your kiddos giggling all story long.
And if you’re a primary teacher, I’ve got a free activity to do after reading this sweet story with your kiddos.
I broke it down into two parts because I love a group activity to brain storm and a student activity for them to take home or display.
Part 1: Popular Pair Group Chart
This chart works great for reading and circling back to the text about the different popular pairs seen in the story plus in real life. You can use the solid hearts (or cut them apart) as whole group conversation checkpoints by getting littles to think about pairs they might know or ones they can recall from the story. (For the sake of the activity) I would really chat about the importance of these pairs and what it would be like say.. if spaghetti and meatballs didn’t have meatballs? How would that change the situation and how would that really look to visualize it — Rob’s art gives such great examples of what this looks like to help them (later) come up with their own.
If you want to get the students more involved in this process, print these cards out and use a “share a pair” slip to allow littles to interact more with the chart by writing/drawing their own example. Set a timer, partner them up and think it out – this step can help later with their independent task. 🙂
Part 2: Student Task
After reading and the making the chart together, student’s should have a better understanding of popular pairs, their significance together/apart plus a good mental image. Now, they will take that knowledge and put it on paper with this FREE creative writing task “Cupig’s arrow strikes again and this time it hits…”
I have blank heart options or a few picture pair options (like mine with Mac & Cheese) for extra support. When going over the page, I would highlight the broken heart as the popular pair like on the chart & point out that Cupig’s has arrow pierced through it and split the heart into two parts! The second part of the heart has now been replaced with something new and silly. like in the read aloud.. but what? This is where littles can come up with their silly ideas just like in the Cupig storybook! Once they’re finished with their writing, craft up the optional arrow and “attach”pierce” through their page.
and how fun will these ideas be to share aloud with classmates! ek! 🙂
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