Posts Tagged ‘memory’
Book Review: How Will We Get to the Beach
Oct
How Will We Get to the Beach by Brigitte Luciani, illustrated by Eve Tharlet
This book may be a little more difficult to track down than last week’s book. My local library does not have this book, and I was not able to locate it on Scholastic’s website. But I did notice that it is available both new and used from Amazon. And also in Spanish. And also in paperback. All sorts of options there. Onward to the activities!
Real Mom Activity
Memory Tray Game: This is a simple memory and guessing exercise you can do with children of any age. All you need is some sort of tray like a cookie sheet and an assortment of objects. If you just wanted to use the table that would work too. Basically, you spread the items out, let your kids look at them and touch them for a minute or so, have everyone close their eyes, and then take one thing away. Then, they open their eyes and guess what you took. You can easily scale the difficulty of the game by having more or fewer items, by lengthening or shortening the time they explore the items, by changing or not changing the items every round, and by taking away more or fewer objects.
Supermom Mom Activity
Retelling the Story: Books with strong plot patterns are good choices to have children retell creatively. So get together the paper and crayons and markers and staples and stuff you’ll need to make a book. If you need more suggestions, I did a post on book writing that might help you. Then, help your kids think of 5 items and a place they’d like to take them. Brainstorm different modes of transportation together. Now it’s time to write the story again. Depending on the age of your child, you can write the story or caption the pictures she draws. If your child is older and interested, have him both illustrate and write a new story. Oh, and don’t forget to hide a ladybug on each page!
If you do this activity with your children, be sure to give them some sort of outlet to display their creativity. An authentic audience will nearly always help kids engage more deeply and creatively in their work. We would definitely like to see what your kids come up with, so share with us if you can. You can send us a link to your blog or email me a .pdf file to post. My kids are out of school for a few days next week, so I’m planning this activity for one of those days. I’ll report back on how things go.
