Bringing Books to Life

BRINGING BOOKS TO LIFE FOR YOUR PRESCHOOLER

Making books and acting out stories will help to promote a love of reading and develop early literacy skills. Engaging with books in a variety of ways will foster language development and growth and teach your child how to think, sequence ideas, solve problems, and imagine.

  • Making Story Bags or Story Boxes

taken from: Susan Gaylord’s website: http://www.makingbooks.com/freeprojects.shtml

Story bags or story boxes are a collection of materials that are used to demonstrate the story when reading a particular book. When collecting materials to put in the story bag or box, look for things that your child will enjoy touching. You don't have to have every object named in the book, but focus on a collection of objects that are important in acting out the story.

  • Some book topics may include:
    • Animals and People: You might have a book about a boy who lives on a farm and enjoys playing in the mud in the barnyard, feeding hay to the horses, collecting eggs from the chickens, and eating tomatoes from the garden. You can collect farm animals, a figurine of a boy and pretend food. As you and your child read the book together, you can have her pull each object out of the box as you read about it. She can act out the story using the objects.
    • Weather and Clothing: You might have a book about playing in the snow or at the beach. Gather some articles of clothing mentioned in the story play dress up with your child or with dolls in sequence with the story.
    • Transportation and vehicles: You might have a book that contains transportation and characters. Gather some vehicles and figurines to help act out the events in the story.
    • Counting: Gather 10 things your child enjoys such as cars, balls, princesses and use the toys to count while reading the story.

The most important part is to have fun and engage your child. If you are having fun, your child is having fun as well! Use a variety of voices to act out each character. For example, use a high-pitched voice for a child and a lower voice for a adult. Acting out the emotions of the characters is also beneficial. For example, sound sad, mad, or happy depending on the mood of the character in the story to help your child learn about how different feelings should sound.