This week I was invited to Family Literacy Week activities, and asked to read to infants, toddlers and preschoolers. Yay! Little kids are my most favourite reason to read. I read
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise BrownYou can see in the photo that the little ones are interested in playing with the little story basket I made. Ann from Little Worlds tells us story baskets are "baskets with random objects from the play room, daily life or nature which prompt children (or adults) to tell a story using those objects." Jode from The Empowered Educator adds that they "also introduce a wonderful tactile experience to storytelling and this can help educators and parents introduce and engage visually impaired children as well ...[providing] a hands on learning opportunity for all children no matter their age group or developmental stage."
Sing a Song of Mother Goose by Barbara Reid
I am a Frog by Mo Willems
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin
This is not my Hat by Jon Klassen
T is for Terrible by Peter McCarty.
I put in items from Goodnight Moon (comb, brush, bowl, three little bears, mittens... but no mush) in a wide basket. Making this type of story basket with book available and accessible is a wonderful opportunity for little ones to experience a story physically, and to later go back and re-tell it in their own way and own time as often as they like.
I had a cow and dinosaur puppet helping me tell some of the stories (which elicited a wild response - the Dino was tickled to death, completely failing to convince the children he was "terrible"). I gathered some musical instruments from the room to help with the Sing a Song of Mother Goose book.
The children loved the subtraction in the tale of Pete’s wayward buttons, and they were very quick to infer possible fates for the little fish in Klassen’s book "He’s in the big fish's belly!" "No! he’s still hiding in the leaves!" "He’s behind the rock!" Very, very cool.
Cheryl Brown (@CherylAnneBrown) is co-creator of the Storytent and Bookwagon programs, QLNB's Community Literacy Coordinator, and long-time advocate for and facilitator of a variety of family literacy initiatives. In these posts, she has been documenting and sharing snap-shots of some of her daily reading.
