Are your kids celebrating Dr. Seuss’s Birthday? School systems nation wide are participating in an annual program, “Read Across America”. In our schools children are tracking the number of minutes the read with prizes awarded to classrooms when they reach their goals. Encouraging our children to be a reader is an important and often challenging task for parents.
“Tie books into other available media. Direct your children’s’ viewing toward book oriented programs and videotapes based on books, then make the featured books available. When buying toys or clothing, look for book-related themes. For example, Thomas the Tank, Madeline, Barbar the Elephant…” The Learning Tree Store, Danvers MA.
So what does any of this have to do with crafts? Much! The Learning Tree encourages parents to bring book themes into a variety of media in a child’s life. In preschool, kindergarten, even first grade book bags are used to reinforce learning. These bags include a book, toy, crafts and a response journal. The crafts simply allow children to have a hands on connection with the book.
We especially like to make toys that relate back to the book. When we were reading Barbar the Elephant we made a jungle in the top on of a copy paper box, then made the characters from the book to put in the jungle. Paper, cardboard (I like cereal box cardboard best – it’s stronger than paper but sill easy enough for the kids to cut), some markers, paint, tape and glue.
Making puppets and acting out the story is another fun project. We particularly enjoy making finger puppets or popcicle stick puppets. Both types of puppets can be made using scraps of felt (kids have very little fingers), craft foam, paper, even the fingers off old gloves. Add some yarn for hair, glue or draw on a face, and some pipe cleaner stems for arms (if you wish). Complete your project by making a stage. A cereal box works well for a finger puppet stage. Simply cut around the top and up the back so the back opens and it remains standing. Cut out most of the front, again leaving about an inch around the sides so it remains stable. Decorate the box with paper, paints, markers, felt or anything else you can find. Stand the box at the edge of a table and there you have it – a finger or stick puppet stage. If you want to get really fancy you can add back drops! We made ours by using 2 pieces of felt the slightly larger than the front stage opening, we added paper clips to the top corners of the felt and hung it on the back panels of the cereal box. The felt works well because you can make felt scenery they stick to the back drop and can be changed when a new story is introduced.
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