Strega Nona Takes Over

This past week we had a lot of fun with Tomie de Paola's classic Strega Nona.  After focusing on how understanding patterns in a text can help you read the words,  I shared with the children that it's not only books for beginning readers that have patterns.  Great story books, books for older children and even some adult books have patterns too and quite often it's what happens when the pattern changes that reveals the whole point of the story!  This is the case in Strega Nona when the main character successfully makes her magic pasta pot work several time before her helper, Big Anothony ("who never pays attention"), tries it without blowing the magical three kisses.  As the book says, "Stega Nona did not have to look twice to know what had happened" when she saw her little town over flowing with pasta!   Here are some photos of the children performing parts of the story with their popcicle stick puppets