Summer Book Exchange

We absolutely LOVE books and bringing them alive for my kids through crafts, play and learning so when The Educators’ Spin On It introduced Love Book Summer Book Exchange I jumped at the chance to share a favourite story with another family in the UK and design an activity based on it for them to do at home just like we would.

A couple of weeks ago we received our book and activity pack from Rebecca and her girls at Here Come The Girls all about WHALES – a fantastic topic for me and my kids. With two story books (thanks Rebecca it prevented a huge argument) as well as some crafting supplies and a fantastic whale full of ideas we set about reading the books and bringing them to life with a couple of suggestions off the Whale.

The two books Rebecca and the girls sent us were The Snail and the Whale (an affiliate link that will cost you no more than normal but helps keep Rainy Day Mum site working) by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Alex Scheffler and My Friend Whale by Simon James.

The Snail and the Whale is a story of a little snail that wants to see the world and a friendly humpback whale who helps him visit far off lands from ice, to jungles and to coral reefs they explore the world until the whale gets to close to the shore and it’s up to the tiny snail to save the whale. As with all Julia Donaldson books the rhythm and language is ideal for young kids and Alex Scheffler illustrations as always are fabulous.

We picked creating some puppets from the Whale to bring the book alive and I quickly made a whale puppet and a snail puppet using the funky foam, craft sticks and a goggly eye. With the two puppets J and T set about retelling the story of The Snail and the Whale.

My Friend Whale is an excellent book to introduce children to the giant Blue Whale – J who is finishing his Kindergarten year was able to read the majority of the book to T and me needing little help with segmenting and blending some of the longer words and more difficult ones. With a strong conservation message about the decline of Whales around the whale at the end it was ideal for me and my kids.

With the book talking about Whale’s talking we decided to pick the activity from the Whale of making Whale Noise with a plastic Cup. First off we did a search on Google for some Whale Noise for the kids to hear what it sounded like and then we tried to copy the noise of the whales using the plastic cup to make it sound like we were under water.

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.