Sorting Letters
d ➡ Do
ea
View ➡ R
1
About this View-Read-Do Activity
Both the episode and the book show what happens when chaos
reigns! Although mischief can be fun, it can also get out of hand.
The pigs needs to clean up their mess, and the animal children
need to be sorted and sent to bed. Sorting upper case letters helps
children with letter recognition and matching.
View
Pigs, Pigs, Pigs!/The Three Little Pigs” #501
About the Episode
Crash! Bang! Shout! Lionel and Leona enjoy the rhyming book Pigs Aplenty,
Pigs Galore! by David McPhail. The story is about a rambunctious herd of
partying pigs that run amok and make a monstrous mess of their host’s
orderly home.
2
Read
Nighty Night
by Margaret Wild
About the Book
It is bedtime on the farm, but the baby animals
want to keep playing. When each of the parent
animals says goodnight to his or her little ones,
all of the baby animals have switched places—the chicks are in the sheep’s pen,
the piglets are in the duck pond, the lambs are in the henhouse. After they are all
sorted, the little animals find still other ways to stall.
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Things to Talk about with Children
Before you read, discuss the baby names of the animals featured in the book (pig/
piglet, sheep/lamb, duck/duckling, hen/chick). You can expand the discussion to
include other familiar animals (dog/puppy, cat/kitten, etc.).
Talk with children about their bedtime routines. What do they do when they don’t
want to go to sleep? What do they do to help themselves fall asleep?
While reading, talk about words like rascals, scalawags, scamps, and tricksters. Define
them as needed. What kind of words are these? Can children think of similar words?
Encourage children to predict which baby animals the parent animal will find when
he or she says goodnight.
After reading, invite children to describe how they think the baby
animals were sorted into their proper places.
More
3
Do
Sort letters (upper case).
Letter Sorting Activity
Children can sort letters into their proper “beds.” For this activity,
you will need:
• marker
• 26 paper or plastic cups
• scissors
• oaktag, index cards,
• tape or glue
construction paper, or
• resealable plastic bag
other type of paper
Directions
1. Cut paper into squares (approximately 2-1/2" x 2-1/2" in size). Make
enough for two sets of alphabet
letters. These “cards” should be
able to fit inside the cups.
2. Write an upper case letter on
each card. Be sure to make two sets
of letters.
3. Tape or glue one set of letters on
the cups.
5. Invite children to take the mixedup letters out of the bag and sort
them into the cups they belong in.
Children can reenact the story Nighty
Night as they play this game.
6. As an added challenge for older
children, add lower case letters and
match them (Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, Ee…) or
common sight words, such as a, the,
is, that, you, of, in, and, it, to.
4. Place the remaining cards in a
resealable plastic bag.
BETWEEN THE LIONS is produced by WGBH Boston, Sirius Thinking, Ltd, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting. BETWEEN THE LIONS is funded in part by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a
cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Education’s Ready To Learn grant, and by the Barksdale Reading Institute. National corporate funding is provided by Chick-fil-A.
Development of the contents herein was funded in part by the Park Foundation and the Civil Society Institute. This document was developed in part under a cooperative agreement between the
U.S. Department of Education, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Public Broadcasting Service for the Ready To Learn Initiative, PR#s U295A050003 and U295B050003. However,
these contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. ©2002, 2009 WGBH Educational
Foundation and Sirius Thinking Ltd. All rights reserved. BETWEEN THE LIONS, Get Wild About Reading and the BTL characters and related indicia are trademarks or registered trademarks of WGBH
Educational Foundation. All third party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Funding for the original development of this fact sheet was provided by the AT&T Family Care
Development Fund.
Sorting Letters
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