Home > Book Based Activities > Minibeast Play dough – Giles Andreae Mad about Minibeasts

Minibeast Play dough – Giles Andreae Mad about Minibeasts

One of our favourite books by Giles Andrea is Mad about Minibeasts illustrated by David Wojtowycz it’s full of fantastic poems about minibeasts ranging from a spider to a dragon fly and including ladybirds and caterpillars.

Mad about minibeasts - minibeast play dough crafting and connecting with books for Virtual Book Club for Kids - Giles Andreae Month

For this months Virtual Book Club for Kids we wanted to bring the book alive so using some play dough that we had I set up an invitation to create with some buttons, eyes, pipe cleaners, the book and some pots of bright coloured play dough.

Mad about Minibeasts playdough fun

Setting this up the kids then descended on the table – breaking off some of the play dough and looking at the images in the book to recreate them.

minibeasts in playdough

It was great to hear J explain how he was going about creating the 3 body parts of the insects in the book and adding the correct number of spiders at the same time as talking about the poems that we had just read.

minibeats in playdough

There was plenty of opportunities to discuss the language – it was great time to talk about poems and rhyme – one of the reasons that I love Giles Andrea books (we have a few in our collection) is because of the rhyme used and especially in the poem books the rhythm to them.

Mad about minibeasts

I love combining play dough with story telling – working on literacy skills at the same time as developing fine motor skills through the manipulation of the material is great working to two early years development skills.

Mad about minibeasts - minibeast play dough crafting and connecting with books for Virtual Book Club for Kids - Giles Andreae Month

Virtual Book Club for Kids

This months virtual book club for kids author is Giles Andrea – if you would like to find out more about the Virtual Book Club for kids click here, how you can join us or the school year’s authors (watch out for later this month or early next when we will be releasing the authors and books for 2014 – 2015).

If you are a blogger please come and link up any Giles Andreae related posts that you may have if you are joining in from home then come and join us on our facebook page posting pictures and sharing your crafts and activities to bring the books alive.

Mad about minibeasts - minibeast play dough crafting and connecting with books for Virtual Book Club for Kids - Giles Andreae Month

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

4 Comments

  1. We actually did the same project with the same book during my preschool nature camp a few weeks ago, great minds think alike. 🙂 It worked well with a crowd too!

  2. Oh, we love Mad About Minibeasts – my little girl has become a bit minibeast obsessed at the moment! I think she’d really enjoy this playdough activity to go along with the book 🙂

  3. What a great learning opportunity about bug body parts, and your playdough set up looks so inviting and colourful!

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