Horton Hatches an Egg
This classic Dr. Suess is a bit harder to read than other books like Green Eggs and Ham. This is great to read aloud to younger kids and to have older kids read themselves. It follows Horton, who sits on and hatches an egg for his less responsible bird friend (and the trials and tribulations he withstands to take care of the egg). With fun language, lots of repetition, and cute pictures, it's a fun story about doing what you say you're going to do.
This story is fun to read to smaller students or have slightly older students take turns reading.
While reading:
- Emphasize the rhymes and the rhythm of the story.
- Let the students see the pictures.
- Stop at the end of each spread to ask the kids if they know specific difficult words. Define them. Go back to the story.
- After every spread or two, stop and ask the kids what’s going on. Ask other questions too, e.g.:
- What do you think of Maizie Bird?
- What do you think of Horton?
- How do you think Horton is feeling?
- Why is it so silly for Horton to be sitting on this tree?
- What does Horton keep saying? What does it mean? Why is he saying it?
- As you get farther along, see if you get the kids to fill in parts of the:
“I meant what I said
and I said what I meant,
an Elephant’s faithful,
one hundred percent.”
Start by seeing if you can read the first part and stop and gesture to them at the “one hundred percent” part. Encourage them to jump in.
“I meant what I said
and I said what I meant,
an Elephant’s faithful,
_________________.”
- If they are doing well, also see if they can fill in some of the obvious rhyming words. Don’t ruin the story, but if they are getting the rhymes, see if they can do it.
After reading:
- Ask them what happened in the story. Let various children piece it together. Push them to fill in the blanks that other children miss.
- Ask them if they know what this is like in real life (e.g., adoption, being raised by a relative or friend, spending so much time with friends or family that you become like them).
- What else could we call an elephant bird?
- Write ELEPHANT and BIRD on the board.
- Have them try out different ways to combine the two words: Elebird, Birdephant, Birephant….
Activity:
- Each student gets a full piece of foam (they can choose the colors if they can be calm).
- Every student gets an egg that’s cut in two.
- Every student gets some white paper.
- Every student has to choose two animals. They draw each animal on the paper and write the name (they will probably need help with the name).
- Then each student draws an animal that is a combination of the other two animals.
- They should also come up with a combo name. They might need help with this.
- Assembly (see picture below):
- In the middle of the foam, they glue their egg.
- The normal animals go on the sides of the egg.
- The combo animal emerges from the egg.
