"The Wind Blew" Activities and Lessons
COLLEEN FLOOD
CLASS
"The Wind Blew" is appropriate for students ages 4 to 8, or in grades pre-K through third. This poetic tale about the wind blowing through a community can be used for lessons and activities across the curriculum. Written and illustrated by Pat Hutchins, it is an excellent resource for a study of authors who illustrate their own work.
1 Lesson Plan Ideas
You can use this book as a basis for a lesson on the qualities and effects of wind while teaching a primary science weather unit. It can be used to teach a poetry lesson on rhyme. Art teachers can use the illustrations to teach a lesson on the art of children's picture books. The book is also useful for teaching math prediction skills. For a social studies unit, you might focus on how different types of weather affect different communities around the world.
2 Pre-reading Activities
To engage your students prior to reading this book, you can center brainstorming questions around your lesson. For example, to work on math prediction skills, have students predict what the wind will do in this tale. For science lessons, brainstorm everything students know about wind. If you are doing an author study, have students share what they know about Pat Hutchins. Art lessons can be initiated by viewing photos of the effects of wind or artworks that show the wind in action. Jump-start poetry lessons by creating a list of rhyming "wind"words.
3 Author/Illustrator Lesson Ideas
Not all authors illustrate their own work. Pat Hutchins does both in "The Wind Blew," so it works well in a study of authors who are also illustrators. Students can comb the library to find other books both written and illustrated by the same person. Discussions can be centered on the pros and cons of illustrating your own written work. Students can write and illustrate their own books and share them with friends and family at an an author and illustrator's tea. They can also donate their works to another class or the school library.
4 Extension Activities
After reading the book, you can let students show what they know with extension activities. Students can write their own weather poems, write and illustrate a new weather-themed story, create wind-powered inventions for a science fair or explain how to keep the wind from blowing their belongings away. You can also have students discuss what they thought the book was going to be about before they read it, what they learned while they read it and what they want to know now.
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