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ORNAMENT STORIES
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Put several figure ornaments in a bag and sit with your children. |
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Reach into the bag, take out an ornament and start telling a story incorporating the item the ornament represents. |
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Next let the child next to you take out an ornament and include it also into your story. |
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Continue with letting your children take turns drawing out ornaments while you weave each item into your story. |
| Variation: After doing this activity a couple of times, try letting the child who chooses an ornament be the one to incorporate it into the story. |
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CARD STORIES
You will need some old holiday greeting cards for this activity.
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Take the cards and cut off the front picture. |
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Sit in a circle with your children. |
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Place the card pictures in the middle of the circle. |
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Let your children take turns choosing a card and tell the rest of the group what is happening in the picture. |
| Variation: You can also do this activity based on a story character, such as The Adventurous Mouse. (This could be a pretend character or one your children have read about in a book, or a class pet.) As each child chooses a card, he must tell about an adventure that the character had in this surrounding. |
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HOLIDAY STORIES
As you read holiday or seasonal stories to your children this time of year, remember to incorporate some of the following learning opportunities.
RECALL – Ask your children the following day about a story that you read to them the day before. What happened in the story? Etc.
PREDICTING – As you read a story, stop once in a while and ask your children what they think will happen next. Later discuss if they were correct or not.
ENDING CHANGES – After reading a story, ask your children if they could think of different ways the story could have ended.
| HOLIDAY COUPON BOOKS |
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With a pen, divide a piece of typing paper into six sections. |
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Design a chore coupon with pictures and words in each section. Example: “Feed the Pet” “Pick Up Toys” “Water the Plants” “Dust the Furniture” “Wash the Car”, etc. |
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Make copies of this sheet and cut out piles of the coupons. |
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Let your children, select which coupons they want in their books. |
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Then help them staple their coupons together. |
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Encourage your children to read their coupon books to you and to their parents when they take them home. |
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Have children give their coupon books to their parents as a holiday gift. |
| COMPOUND WORD STORIES |
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You will need a pile of cards with pictures of objects on them. |
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You could cut pictures from cards or magazines and glue them onto small index cards. |
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Mix up the cards and have your children take turns drawing two cards. |
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Example: A child could draw a card with the picture of a dog and one of a car. |
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Now the child must put the two words together to make a new word, such as cardog, or dogcar. |
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The child tells the rest of the group, the new word he has created and he tells the rest of the group what exactly this new thing is. Example: A dogcar, is a car that looks like a dog; or a dogcar is a car that a dog can drive, or a dogcar is a car that carries dogs. |
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Let each child have a turn drawing two cards and inventing a new item. |
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