Have you ever had a dream? Has your dream ever been so big, it was the size of the moon? Eric Carle creates a soft, whimsical, and hopeful story in Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me where all a young girl wishes for is to play with the moon, and a father who will do anything to make sure she can. These book activities for kids will have you and your child hoping, dreaming, and wishing just like Monica. All parents can empathize with Monica’s dad and would do anything in their power to see their child’s dreams come true. After all, wouldn’t you get your child the moon if they asked for it??
In this post, you’ll find four book activities for kids related to Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle. These activities have been crafted with young learners in mind and to get you and your child to connect through love, understanding, and laughter, the core of My Book Bud. You and your child will infer, discuss their hopes and dreams, explore perspective, and study the phases of the moon. So, go on, and get wishing together!
Table of Contents
Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me
Author/Illustrator: Eric Carle
Published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1986
Summary: Monica has a big wish! She wants to play with the moon! Despite her papa’s best efforts, the moon is much too big to carry home…at least at first. With a little patience and a sprinkle of magic, Monica’s dream comes true after all.
Skills to Tackle – Book Activities for Kids with Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me
Inference: Best for ages 3-6
An inference is made by a reader when something is not directly stated by the author. The reader must “read between the lines” by combining their background knowledge with the evidence from the text to make an inference. Inferences are made throughout the day even when we’re not reading, making it such an important skill to work on.
For example:
If you go to the same ice cream shop everyday on vacation and they are always out of chocolate ice cream, you can make the inference that other people who are also there on vacation really love chocolate ice cream. No one had to tell you this, you just made the inference based on the evidence of the chocolate ice cream being gone everyday and your background knowledge of how much people love chocolate ice cream.
In Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, one night, Monica spies a beautiful full moon outside her bedroom window and she instantly wishes she could play with it. After reaching and realizing she can’t get it herself, she asks her papa to get it for her.
Monica really wants to play with the moon, that much is clear, but we never find out why. You and your child can make inferences about Monica and the motivation behind that big wish. Simple book activities for kids that push them and get them to think a little deeper are great for developing their critical thinking skills.
Example Conversation:
- Parent: Wow, Monica really wants to play with the moon. I wonder why she wants to play with it so bad. What do you think?
- There is no right or wrong answer here, so be open to anything, even if the answers are really silly!
- Child: Maybe she just really likes the moon and wants to be friends with it!
- Parent: Maybe! The moon does look very nice!
- Other possible answers:
- The moon looks like a pizza and she’s hungry.
- She wants to shoot hoops with it.
- She thinks it would be a pretty necklace.
- Other possible answers:
- These goofy responses are a great way to start a conversation with your child. It can help give you some insight into their own lives and things that they deem important. Follow up with some questions like:
- Why would you want to play with the moon?
- Do you think the moon is friendly?
- What’s the first thing you would say to the moon?
These simple book activities for kids are a fun and low pressure way to start a conversation with your child. Try them out and you might learn something new about them!
Hopes and Dreams: Best for ages 4-8
Play with the moon? Wow, that’s certainly one big dream! Some hopes and dreams are realistic and some, like Monica’s, aren’t. Some you can physically hold, and some you hold in your heart. Some are big and some are little. Some you can do yourself, and some you need help with. Some take a long time to achieve and some only take a minute. Creative book activities for kids like this will not only help your child understand the text on a deeper level, but will also help you get to know them more!
Talk to your child about their hopes and dreams and how to make them come true!
Example Conversation:
- Parent: Wow! Monica’s wish was so BIG! She wanted to play with the moon! There can be all kinds of wishes. *reference what was said above* What are some of your hopes and dreams?
Make a list of your child’s hopes, dreams, and wishes. You can write them out on a piece of paper or have your child draw a picture of them. Their wishes might be silly or serious, but put them all on the list!
If your child doesn’t know what to wish for, give some examples for yourself.
Once you both make your list, make a “wish” jar! This can be anything from an old shoe box to a mason jar. Decorate each one, then rip or cut up your wishes and fill your jar! Once/if you fulfill a dream, pull it out and put it on display somewhere like the fridge or a cork board!
Example Wishes
- Get a puppy
- Make the soccer team
- Fly to the moon
- Be a firefighter
- Have a sleepover with my cousins
- Ride a unicorn
- Go to Disney World
You can see that some of these dreams are attainable, some can’t be accomplished until your child is older, and some are totally whimsical. If your child is older, you could try developing a game plan for how to accomplish some of these dreams. That way your child gets the message that some dreams don’t just “happen.” They takes a lot of hard work and dedication to accomplish.
You could try making some of the more outrageous ones come “true” through play with your child. Maybe you could build a “rocket ship” together with cardboard and pretend to “fly to the moon!” For the wishes that might take a while, such as becoming a firefighter, see if you can set up a tour of a fire station so they get the firefighter experience first hand!
Having hopes and dreams are important. It’s a good thing to be working toward something that is meaningful to you, even if it’s silly. Who knows, your child might surprise you and you might learn something totally new about them!
Occasionally reflect back on your wish jar. Maybe once a month or on special holidays to see if there is anything your child has accomplished since the last check in! Your child may also want to add to their dream jar or take a previous dream out. Both are totally acceptable as dreams can come and go, so make sure to be supportive!
Book activities for kids like this one tap into your child at their core. Activities like this help them focus on what’s most important to them (at the moment) and how to help them get there.
Size and Perspective: Best for ages 3-7
Perspective can be a really difficult concept for kids to grasp, especially when it comes to size. Some very large objects can look really small and close even though they’re far away, similar to how the moon looked close enough for Monica to pick up and play with even though it’s thousands of miles away. This is really just a trick of the eye, and the closer you get, the bigger an object becomes or at least it looks bigger to our eyes even though its real size never changes!
Book activities for kids like this help take a confusing concept right off the pages of a book and apply them to a real world scenario out in the “wild.”
You and your child can put this tricky idea to the test in the real world next time you go out on a nature walk, or a walk in the city, or even a car ride!
Example Conversation:
- Parent: Monica thought the moon was close enough for her to pick up and play with! The moon is thousands of miles away and is almost as big as the whole United States! So it is actually really far and HUGE!
- Parent: Sometimes when things are really far away, they can look smaller than they are, but then when you get up close, you can really see how big they are!
Go for a nature walk. Pick a tree in the distance and hold up your thumb and pointer fingers. See if you can get the tree to “fit” between your fingers. From from away it will almost look as if you can pluck it right off the ground and put it in your pocket.
As you get closer, keep doing the “finger test.” The closer you get, the harder it will be to keep that tree “pocket-sized!” Get all the way to the base of the tree so your child can see just how big the tree is when you get up close to it!
Try this Idea with Other Things:
- Skyscraper
- Mountains or hills
- Big trucks
- Buildings
- Cars
This is a fun and cool lesson about perspective and how things shift depending on how you look at them. The best part is, you can play this game just about anywhere! Try sneaking book activities for kids like this one into your everyday conversations with your child. They will help break up the same mundane conversations you have with them regularly and give you something new to connect on!
Expansion Activity: Best for ages 4-9
Where are you moon? Just like Monica, my two youngest kids love the moon, and when our kids are up late enough to see it, they often want to go outside and track where it is and see what it looks like. My youngest loves to track it when we’re in the car, and whenever he sees it out of the window, he immediately screams, “Look, moon!” After reading Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, use this fun and delicious activity to track the phases of the moon with your child. Book activities for kids pull ideas right off the pages and turn them into a fun and interactive experiences.
Prepare to track the moon with…Oreos! This yummy treat is a great way to visually show the different phases of the moon. When you carefully split an Oreo open, there should be one side that’s just cookie and one side that has all the cream still attached to the cookie. The cream side should look like a full moon with the cream being the moon and the cookie acting as the background of outer space.
You can visually represent the eight phases of the moon by displaying eight Oreo cookies around the perimeter of a paper plate:
- New Moon (top of the plate): remove all the cream — no moon in sight!
- Waxing Crescent: leave just a small sliver of cream on the right side
- First Quarter: leave half the cream on the right
- Waxing Gibbous: leave more than half on the right
- Full Moon: keep all the cream on!
- Waning Gibbous: leave more than half on the left
- Last Quarter: leave half the cream on the left
- Waning Crescent: leave a small sliver of cream on the left
Leave this plate on display for the rest of the month, if you can make them last that long! Each night you and your child can track which phase the moon is in. Take a new Oreo outside with you, open it up and match the amount of cream on the Oreo to the moon outside. Then go inside and reference your Oreo lunar phase plate. You and your child can decide which phase of the cycle the moon is in and enjoy a perfect before-bed treat!
If your child is particularly interested in the moon, you can explicitly tell them the names of the different phases. If they are younger, you can just display the cookies and describe how the moon changes a little bit each night. It’s a delicious and easy way to bring the moon down to Earth, at least in cookie form!
Free Printable!
Look at the moon each night and draw or paste a picture of what it looks like. Watch how it changes over time! Challenge: Start your tracker on the night of a new moon so you can follow the moon through a full lunar cycle.
To Wrap Things Up:
Whether you’re dreaming big, learning about moon phases with cookies, or just spotting the moon on a nighttime walk, these book activities for kids are a great way to connect with your child while building early literacy and thinking skills. The moon may be far away, but the moments you share together bring it a little closer.
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