Whoops in the classroom

Whoops by Suzi Moore

What you’ll need

• A copy of Whoops (My review)
• Musical instruments or noisy things
• A dog, a cat and a mouse. These could be puppets, toys, drawn pictures or even just random objects that represent each animal

Age Level

Any junior primary school class will love it.

Reading Whoops

Whoops is a lovely noisy romp full of bangs and crashes and muddled up animal noises. Make sure you’re in a place where you can unleash the mayhem. This one isn’t such a great choice in a shared teaching space, maybe take it outside, or even better, see if the music room is free.

Storytelling

Retelling the story with props and noise makers is the best. I’ve used it with classes online where they brought along three soft toys and something noisy. In the classroom it would be even better. Probably the easiest option would be to split the class into groups of 4. Everybody either makes a dog, cat, mouse or a lady. These could be drawn and cut out, or an entire art activity could revolve around character creation. Use crayon and dye, cut out a front and back in an oven mitt shape and staple them together for a hand puppet effect. In addition you could make noisy things. This could also be an entire art/music lesson. There are loads of ideas for making homemade shakers online.

Read the story and the characters join in at the appropriate times. The house turns around and around several times so get everyone up and spinning. For the lovely noisy parts, let it rip!

Writing

Full of bangs and crashes, Whoops is the perfect introduction to talking about onomatopoeia. I’ll let you come up with your own lesson for this one because I’ve got a pie hot out of the oven waiting for me. Share your ideas in the comments.

Check out Whoops! at Auckland Libraries.

Or buy Whoops! from Fishpond.