Books, Story, Action!

As you might know this month is Moving it in May here at We are Happy Playing and I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to incorporate more movement into our daily lives and schedule. Since the post about children and yoga, we have made yoga a regular activity that we do after kindergarten using the Cosmic Kids' videos on YouTube and the I am Love yoga app on the tablet as part of our bedtime routine.

A daily activity we participate in as a family is story time, so I've been looking for ideas that would make story time not just a time to sit and listen, but a time where we can get active while enjoying a story. Immediately I thought about acting out what is written in the story, but what books would lend themselves to this type of activity? Luckily we had two such books sitting on our shelf!

The first one is  We are Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen.

 

The story is of a brave family that go out to hunt a bear. In order to get to the bear's hideout they find they need to go through a series of environmental conditions such as long swishy grass, squishy mud and a snow storm. As the family go through these different places there is great opportunity for children to use their bodies to act out the actions. Hands waving like swishy grass, stomping through gooey mud etc. 

Here are some photos of my little one, her cousin and their  interpretation of the book.

 Swishing through long grass.. Swishy Swashy

 

Stomping through thick oozy mud!

Apparently this is how these two monkeys feel one moves through the river, splash splosh. Not by waddling through it but swimming across it.

And we must not forget to hide under the covers when the bear chases us home.

 Just a little note, in looking for images of the book for this post, I came across this video which actually shows the author performing the story. How crazy random is that!? So I decided to share. While this is kinds cute and quaint, I do love the more energetic version my daughter came up with!

The second book we had on the shelf was Panda Bear Panda Bear What do You See? by Bill Martin Jr and illustrated by the wonderful Eric Carle.

In this book a series of animals are asked what they can see, with each responding with the name of another animal and the action they are performing. See pictures below.

"Water buffalo, water buffalo what do you see? I see a spider monkey swinging by me." 

"Blue herring, blue herring what do you see? I see a prairie dog digging by me. "

It's pretty obvious to see why this book makes a great story for children to move to. Simply ask the children to act out the different things the animals are doing as you go through the book.

As you may or may not know there are other books in this series with the first being Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See? and Polar Bear, Polar Bear what do You Hear? While these two books focus on colours and sounds, there is no reason why children couldn't be encouraged to act like the various animals in the story, especially with the second one slithering like a snake while you hiss like one would be a wonderful physical experience for any child.

If you are looking for other books with animals that children can pretend to be try Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell and Animal Moves by Dawn Apperley. Both books are simple and children can act out the animals featured in both books.

Where the Wild Things Are  by Maurice Sendak are also lends itself beautifully to being acted out by children.Pretending to sail across the sea, stomping and growling like a wild thing all part of the fun you can have with is story.

Whilst this is just a handful of books that lend themselves well to being acted out through movement I am sure there are many more and we plan on finding those over the next month or more. Maybe you yourself have some that you know of? If you do we would love to hear from you in the comments section.

Until next time happy story time and happy playing.

Reading corner makeover.

My daughter has been a big fan of books since she was 7 months old. The first book I read to her was Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox. We read that book every night for months. It has been read so many times by myself and handled so many times more by my daughter, that it is just barely keeping  together, its poor spine breaking apart in 3 places.

Over the last few years we have read almost every night. Unfortunately lately this hasn't been so. Since we got an IPad my daughter has been more often than not requesting that she watches an episode of The Octonauts, Peppa Pig or Lillie Fee on it and in bed before going to sleep or what was formerly known as story time. At first I was OK with it because it wasn't every night and we usually had a book as well. But lately books have been pushed aside. I hardly catch her looking at books alone and the most heart breaking part is that she doesn't want to sit on my lap or snuggle in bed to hear a story, even if I insist.

I personally am missing Peter Rabbit and Jemima Puddle Duck. I am missing the dear Hungry Caterpillar and getting caught up in We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Hairy Macklary from Donaldson's dairy, where have you been these last few months? And Slinky Malinky are you behaving? Oh why doesn't my daughter want to listen to a book anymore? What is that great about watching repeats of the Octonauts? Why have I let it get to this point? I might not have the answers to these questions but I think I know how I might be able to fix the situation. An idea is brewing, one that will put a little magic back into story time.

How am I going to do that you ask? Well, with a reading corner MAKEOVER! No wonder books are being forgotten, story time dumped for YouTube cartoons, look at the awful state of our reading corner! The chair is old and tattered, the books are stashed away in a cupboard and that radio CD player just doesn't belong! (OK sometimes we play audio books on it hence why it's in the reading corner)

After giving it some thought I decided we need to turn this dull corner into a magical fairy nook. For this I was going to hang some organza above the chair to give it a more cosy cave/den like quality. Giving us a sense that when sitting under it we have been transported to magical story land, leaving the real world on the outside.

My daughter was excited once I had explained my idea and vision. She was more than eager to help so I gave her the job of painting a large branch that I planned on using to hang the material from. While she was doing that I got onto sewing a loop in the top of the organza so I could thread it over the branch.

Once that was done I went into the cellar to look for some sort of hanging mechanism. I found two large hooks that I then drove into the slanted roof just above the chair.Yes I had to be brave and bust out the power tools!











 

  With the hooks in place I found some lovely lace ribbon and tied the branch to the hooks. (this was after I threaded the material on)

Now it wasn't only that chair that needed serious work, the cupboard also needed a spruce up! How can a child be interested in looking at books if the books were always out of sight? A few old wicker baskets later, some plastic greenery and LED candles, Bob's-you're-uncle we had an enchanted cupboard top that begged you to grab a book! The basket on the right is for our current library books, the one of the left for our collection of little Pixi books, perfect for darling daughter to choose herself and look at. I also put dolly in the basket thinking maybe my monkey would like to snuggle with her while reading.

Unfortunately the CD rack had to stay, it is after all filled with Audio books, but I decided it will also have to house our paper story stones, which are in the little basket. We actually now sit with the basket when telling stories, picking stones directly from the basket. The toadstool money box is just something we had lying around and I thought fitted the fairy garden theme.

Now you can't have a fairy themed corner without fairy lights, so I've hung some over the branch too. These one's work with batteries which means we don't need a power outlet. As you can see I've also put some more plastic greenery and glued plastic blossoms on the organza, completing the fairy garden look.

So you might now be wondering, has their been any change, has my daughter once more become a fan or books and stories? Well the short answer is YES! Actually as soon as the material was hung and the nook created she was in there with her basket of Pixi books and didn't come out until I was finished and we needed to get dinner ready. Thinking it was too good to be true I figured the next day things would be back to normal and she'd be begging for the IPad again. Nope, that night she gladly let me tell her a stone story and the next morning, as soon as she woke up, she burst into our bedroom with a book in hand begging me to read it.  Again tonight there was no asking for Octonauts but a couple of books under LED candle and fairy lights. I am still pinching myself, I cannot believe that a simple reading corner makeover has brought books back into our lives so quickly. All I can say is thank goodness!

If you've been struggling to make books a thing in your household I hope you have found some inspiration with our story. Let me know if you have. The Internet is also great for ideas just do a Google search and get inspired!

Happy reading, happy playing.