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.

Paper Story Stones, first time trying them

I don't know about you but I am loving these story stones that I keep seeing around the Internet. At first I wasn't sure what they were all about but the lovely women at Sensory Play Ideas for Children helped me out.

So these story stones, what are they all about? Well they are stones with pictures on them that help children, and adults alike, to initiate the telling of a story.

One way you can use them is by putting them all in a bag and then the child picks a stone out and uses the picture on the stone to start the story telling. You then pick out another and use that image to guide the next part of your story. You continue picking out stones and using the pictures to guide the rest of the story. Another way is to sort some stones in a sequence and then get the child or adult to tell a story in the order that the stones show. The stones with their pictures can help a child retell a familiar book by sequencing the pictures in order.

Whilst I love the concept of story stones, at the moment I do not have the time to gather stones and paint pictures on them and neither do I have the money to buy some already made. What I do have though is some time to make and print these paper laminated versions. As you can see I've still kept the stone theme but they are a from a file I made in Microsoft Word and then printed. Easy to make multiple sets!

Here is a basic 'Fairy Tale ' set  I'm making at the moment. I'm using the picture communication symbols from Boardmaker for the pictures. I'm also including the written word as I think this could help children familiarise themselves with the words, and in turn further their reading skills. (I caught my daughter the other day sounding out the initial letters to work out what the pictures were of)

I am the first to admit that these are not as nice as the painted stone versions but sometimes limited time and money means compromise. I must say laminating them does help make them smooth and shinny like a stone (OK I'm trying really hard here to sell them aren't I? Hehehehe). But then again one thing that may convince you of the value of this version is storage and portability. From what I've seen on the Internet, the stones used look quite big and would probably weigh a bit too if you're taking a bunch of them on a trip or outing. They would also need containers for storing and depending on your child, they could also be thrown around and cause a bit of damage! For this reason I think paper  can be a great option too. Who knows, one day I might manage to make them look nicer too!

In order to test how story stones work, I gave it a go the other night by randomly picking one out of the pile to start the story telling and then randomly picking out another to continue. I also wrote the story down so I could share it with you. I must admit, at first I thought it was going to be awkward and hard to keep a story going with random pictures dictating the story but it wasn't, rather it was amazing how inspiring this system is. I would never have thought up of this story on my own! Hooray for story stones!

Here is the story I made up using the `fairy tale`set randomly. 

The Underwater Castle: a story stone inspired tale! 

 (story stone picked highlighted in red)

Once upon a time if you stood by the banks of this enchanted pond you could see a glimpse of a spell bound castle that lay beneath the water. The castle had been captured by a jealous witch who wished to rule the kingdom herself. With a wave of her wand she had cast a powerful spell that condemned the castle and all who lived in it to a life underwater. 

While the witch thought that she'd captured the whole court, there was one who had escaped this watery fate. That someone was the beautiful princess. The princess was not in the castle that day but instead was visiting the house of an old lady she'd befriended. The lady lived in a nearby village. The princess was introduced to this old lady by the queen herself, who was fond of the  parties, cakes and tarts that the old lady baked. The queen's favourite was one of the old woman's family recipes, strawberry and rhubarb tart. 

Since the disappearance of her family and the castle, the princess had made it her mission to find them and to bring the person responsible for their disappearance to justice. She knew she couldn't do it herself so she asked her fairy godmother to help.  The fairy godmother had a clue as to what had happened to the royal family and castle. She told the princess of how she was flying around the forest the day her family disappeared and while she didn't think much of it at the time, she did remember seeing some magical fireworks and lights in the near distance. Could that have something to do with the missing castle? 

That night, by the light of the full moon, the princess and her fairy godmother flew on the back of a the fairy godmother's pet dragon to the place in the forest where the fairy godmother had seen the lights. They didn't want anyone to notice them so they dismounted the dragon by the edge of the forest and then took a winding path through the forest to the spot where the lights came from. 

At first they couldn't see the pond in front of them but as the moon came out from behind the clouds and shone its silvery light, both the princess and the fairy godmother could clearly spot the simmering waters of the pond. While they stood there looking at the pond they noticed the presence of a tall slender figure that had a pointy hat and cloak on. It was the wizard of the forest and he looked grumpy! 

"What's wrong?" asked the princess. 
"I am tired of that nasty witch and her evil spells!" exclaimed the wizard.
"Nasty witch?, why is she nasty?" asked the fairy godmother.
"Because she has done a most unbelievable and despicable thing!"
"What?" exclaimed both the princess and the fairy godmother in unison. 
 The wizard rubbed his beard, leaned in close and whispered..."She put the castle and the whole royal family in MY pond!" 

The princes and  fairy god mother looked at each other with surprised expressions. They did not expect this for an answer.
"What a truly evil witch! How can we get the castle and my family out?" asked the princess. 
"We must wait for a rainbow to appear, then I can gather all my power and cast a counter spell that will put everything right!" declared the wizard. 

So the three of them sat up all night waiting for morning to come, hopefully with a rainbow! But when morning came there were no clouds or rain in sight. The three friends grew desperate. Before the princess, and her company could lose all hope they came upon a gnome. The gnome had heard the three talking the night before and knew that he could help. 

"Hello princess, I think I can help you! I, you see, am a special magical gnome who controls the weather and I can conjure a rainbow for you. I'm a big fan of your dad the king and it would be an honour to help you his daughter."

The princess was so happy. She ordered the gnome to work his magic immediately. As the rain fell and went and the rainbow appeared, the wizard got to work and cast his spell. Out of the pond rose the castle and with a flash and a lightning blitz the castle returned to it's rightful place in the center of the kingdom.

The witch flew in quickly shocked to find her spell had been broken. She tried once more to recast the spell but as she waved her wand a large mighty bird came out of the sky and plucked the wand out of her hand. Without it the witch had no magic. The grumpy wizard, who was so upset with the witch's actions finally had his chance to take revenge and with the wave of his wand turned the witch into a a gold trimmed coach which he offered the princess and the fairy godmother for their journey home.
And so until this day still the princess and her family still use this coach for trips in muddy weather just to make sure the witch had learnt her lesson! 


And that is the end of my first story stone fairy tale! I've kept true to the game and not edited anything, writing exactly what had come into my head as I picked the stones.

Now to test them on darling daughter! Will let you know what she thinks and if she is able to use them for story telling in a future post!

Happy story telling and happy playing!