puppets Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Gingerbread Man Story – Printable Finger Puppets

December 5, 2016 By Deirdre

The story of the Gingerbread Man has been retold in a number of books. The Gingerbread Man retold by Jim Alyesworth is new to me. After seeing it on the Virtual Book Club list, I went to the library to check it out. What fun this version is! I love the storyline and the illustrations. I thought it would be fun to create finger puppets that could be used to retell or walk through the story.

Gingerbread Man Story Puppets that I made include the Gingerbread Man, the old women, the old man, and the fox. They appear is many of the other version that I have read. This set also includes the cow, the pig, and butcher mentioned in Jim Alyesworth’s version of the book. If you are exploring a different version of the story you can still use the first three or four puppets.

How You Can Use the Gingerbread Man Story Puppets

Before Reading the Gingerbread Man Story

You may want to share the puppets with your children before reading the book. Your children can share what they know about each of the characters. You can also have them predict what they will do in the story. It allows your kids to build a foundation for the story and share what they anticipate is going to happen.

During the Reading of the Gingerbread Man Story

You can pass out each of the puppets and have your children hold up their puppet when it appears in the book. If you’re reading the book to at a table, you can use the puppet speaking as pointed in the book.

After Reading the Gingerbread Man Story

You can have your children take turns use one of the puppets to retell the story. It might be fun to have your children retell the story based from the perspective of the puppet they have selected or have been given.

Here are several more Gingerbread Man activities:

More Wonderful Gingerbread Man-Themed Books

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Fall Crafts with Owls for Kids

September 14, 2015 By Deirdre

Fall Crafts with Owls for Kids
Who doesn’t like making fall crafts with owls! While we may have owls around our areas all year long , fall is the time of year we wait to do units and activities that focus on owls. I have previously shared two owl crafts. The first one featured an owl made of leaves. Second owl craft has an owl with cupcake liner eyes.

Along sharing my fall crafts with owls I want to share some awesome owls that have been created by others. After checking them out, I won’t be surprised if you didn’t have your children create a whole series of owl crafts.

At the end of this post you will find a number for children’s books with an owl theme.( I love tying together crafts and books.) The crafts can be used for story retelling or just as a story extension.

Fall Craft with Owls

Fall Crafts with Owls for Kids

Book Inspired Preschool Owl Craft from Fun-A-Day

Owl Halloween Crafts for Kids from Handmade Kids Art

Paper Plate Owl Craft from Crafts by Amanda

Printable Owl Craft from Kids Activities Blog

Fall Crafts with Owls for Kids

Easy Owl Craft for Kids from No Time for Flashcards

Celery Stamped Owl Craft for Kids from Crafty Morning

Fall Crafts with Owls for Kids

Paper Plate Owl Craft from Reading Confetti

Painting Owl Babies

Whootastic Pinecone Owls from Paging Fun Mums

Owl Crafts from Housing a Forest

Fall Crafts with Owls for Kids

Torn Paper Owl from JDaniel4’s Mom (That’s me!)

Cupcake Liner Owl Puppet from I Heart Crafty Things

Paper Plate Owls from Happy Hooligans

Shape Owl from B-Inspired Mama

Fall Crafts with Owls for KIds

Adorable CD Owl Ornaments from Happy Hooligans

Paper Plate Snowy Owl Kids Craft from ABC Creative Learning

Owl Bucket Craft from Meaningful Mama

Owl Themed Books That Will Go Well With Fall Crafts

Owls

If your children love to read about facts, they will love this Gail Gibbons book. It is filled with tons of facts about owls! Everything from their behavior to their anatomy is covered.

In My Tree

This book comes with a puppet that pokes through the pages. What fun it is to have puppet to share the book with. The owl in the book shares just why his tree is cozy!

Owl Babies

This story shares what three small owls think and feel when the awaken to find that their mom is not in their nest. The pictures in the book are gorgeous!

Owly

Owly is a fun graphic novel that contains two stories for kids. The first called ” The Way Home” shares how Owly helps his friend Wormy find his way home after a storm. The second “The Bittersweet Summer” shares how the two friends have to say goodbye to their hummingbird birds at the end of the summer. Kids are going to love these simple tales.

Little Owl’s Night

Little Owl spends the night visiting his friends who are awake at night. What fun he has! He can’t imagine why other animals would sleep through the night.

Peek-A Who?

This simple board book was passed down to us from my sister Kate’s kids. It is filled with simple rhymes and cut out that gives hints as to what is coming up next in the book.

Cock-A-Doodle-Hoooo!

After finding shelter in a hen house during a storm and wants to stay. The hens would rather have a rooster move in. Can he convince them that he should get to stay?

As you can see some of these are old favorites! Some a brand new to me! I think each of these would be great for story retelling.

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ABCs of Exploring Books with Children: A-H

January 7, 2013 By Deirdre

ABCs of Exploring Books with Children: Activity Ideas from R-Z

Many of you made New Year’s resolutions to do more with your children or to be better parents. The bloggers of the Kid Blogger Network are hosting a ABC event that will probably cover the area you wanted to work on. There are posts that contain lists with related post on Mom Tips and Tricks, School Activities, Learning Through Play, Literacy and Arts and Crafts.

ABCs of Exploring Books with Children: A-H

Click here to view all of the blog participating in the ABC event along with their topics.

Due to the fact that I host a weekly link up based on exploring concepts discussed in children’s books called Read.Explore.Learn, I thought my ABC list should be about about exploring books.

When I was a classroom teacher, I used books to introduce new concepts to my students all the time. Not every child came school with the same experiential background. By reading a book on a topic those who need some foundation building learned some facts on that topic and those that had already learned about that topic had their mind refreshed.

After reading a book, I think it is helpful for children to make a learning connection to the concepts that have just read. There are so many ways to explore books.

Today we will look at activities from A-H. Tomorrow I will cover activities from I-Q and on Friday I will share activities from R-Z.

Here are some of exploring books that we have tried at my house and others I have admired found on other blogs:

A

Album of Book Related Concepts

JDaniel and I read a book about Veteran’s Day and then talk about how his grandfather was veteran. We put photos of the types of planes he flew that I found on the internet and pictures of his grandfather. into an album.

Animal Snack

After reading the book Night Tree last Christmas, we made a snack for the birds to have and hung it from a tree we planted for JDaniel in our year.

Acting Out a Story

Whether it is the child acting out the story or having them use toys to do so helps them share what the story was about and what they learned from it. We used stuffed rabbits to retell the story Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!

B

Bring a Meal

Bringing a meal like breakfast you made for Mom on Mother’s Day is a way to extend the concepts you heard in a book based on Mother’s Day.

Bug Counting

Simple materials like bug shaped erasers and bug box can be used to explore the counting concepts covered in a book like One Little Blueberry.

C

Craft Furniture

If a book has a specific piece of furniture that is featured in it, like the bed in Princess and the Pea. You can crease a simple bed with construction paper.
Compare to Another Story

After reading one book on farm life, JDaniel and I read another farm themed book. We then talked about the similarities and differences of the books.

Cookie Cutter Retelling

We happen to have a lot of cookie cutters at our house. It is fun to search through our bins of cookie cutters to find ones that relate to a story we have read. We can then use them to retell the story just as we did when we read Room for a Little One about the animals around Jesus in the manger.
Cards
After reading a Christmas story last year, JDaniel helped me make homemade thank you notes to send to friends and family.

Craft a Flower

Valentine’s Day and a Valentine’s Day book last year lead to JDaniel making craft that was a vase with flowers to give as a gift.

Cook a Dessert

My family loves haystack cookies so, after reading a book about a scarecrow we made some for dessert.

D

Dough Ornaments

Dough ornaments are fun to make. We made some last year after reading a book about Christmas ornaments.

Design Cardboard Transport System

After reading the book The Red Sled, we made a sled for JDaniel’s bear Ted to ride on just like the bear in the book.

E

Experiment with Concepts

JDaniel and I read a book about a world of ice cream and then we made our own ice cream by rolling a coffee can back and forth.

Eat a Snack Based on a Character

Just last month JDaniel and I had a snack based on the Hobbit after reading a simple picture book based on the book.

Experience Concepts of a Story

Last summer right before going to the beach we read a book about tide pools and when we went to the beach we build one.

Explore Emotions

After reading a book on pumpkins that talked about emotions, we played with a felt pumpkins emotions activity and talked about feelings.

F

Fake or Pretend Play

We haven’t had a lot of snow here in South Carolina, after reading a book about snow we played with fake snow (cotton balls) in a sensory bin.

Field Trips

Field Trips are a great way to extend concepts from a books. We have gone to visit an apple orchard after reading about one as well as a local garden after reading a garden related book.

Finger Puppets

Creating finger puppets like an elephant made of a recycled cd or a turkey out of a cardboard box are wonderful tools for retelling or extending a story.

G

Grab Similar Toys and Pretend

You may not always have a toy that is just like the characters in a book, but you can grab similar ones or have the toy pretend they are the character. We did that with a book based on ocean animals.

H

Hand Puppet

Hand puppets are great for retelling just as finger puppets are. We made a fox puppet to go along with a Dr. Seuss book that still comes out to retell his book along with other books.

Help a Character Dress Up

A simple outline of a character can be dressed up in clothes that wore in the story with cloth, paper, or other craft elements.

Reminder: Tomorrow I will be sharing ABCs of Exploring Books with Children- Part Two: I-P

For more literacy ABC posts you may want to visit the wonderful blogs below.

Books for Preschoolers from Mommy and Me Book Club
Early Literacy from Playdough to Plato
Graphic Novels from Pragmatic Mom
Learning to Read Through Play from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas
Learning to Write from NurtureStore
Reading Comprehension for Pre K-Grade 1 from The Wise Owl Factory
Storytelling from A Mom with a Lesson Plan

Read.Explore.Learn.- Tweak Tweak (An Elephant with Many Questions)

May 4, 2012 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read.Explore.Learn.! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. the badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

The little elephant in the book Tweak Tweak by Eve Bunting reminds me of JDaniel. His mama tells her to tweak her tail when she has a question and just like my guy she is filled with questions.

Does she want to know what the frog is doing? She is jumping says his mom. The little elephant wants to know if she can jump. Her mom tells her that she can’t but, she can stomp.

As she goes on her walk with her mom she wants to know if she can do the same things monkeys and many other animals can do. Each time her mom points out that he can’t do what they can, but she can do special things that elephants can do.

Her mom also tells her she can walk with her mom, ask questions and learn. Oh! and remember the way home.

What did we do to extend concepts from the book?

Elephant Puppet for Retelling

An old cd with felt ears and wiggling eyes makes a perfect elephant puppet. After reading Tweak Tweak, JDaniel stuck his finger through the hole in the center of the cd to add a trunk to the puppet.