Creating Activities for Books

I would love to introduce to you today to one of part of my favourite blogging team – Kim from The Educator’s Spin On It is guest posting for me today with some fabulous information for Creating Activities for Books.

Hi I’m Kim from The Educators’ Spin On It.  We were very excited to guest post here with some ideas about Creating Activities for Books, as we have enjoyed so many amazing activities that Cerys has shared with us on Rainy Day Mum!  It’s easy to see that she’s helping many families enjoy childhood and learn so many things. It’s been fun teaming up with Rainy Day Mum too this past summer for the MemeTales Readathon and the Summer Virtual Book Club too!

Literacy is something near and dear to our hearts as both educators and moms.  In fact we love it so dearly that we had so much fun reaching out to families this summer and sharing our Love Books Exchange Program with them.  We had 20 bloggers sharing great books and activities with each other.

I think it’s really important to talk about why we create activities to go with books. There are so many important fundamental early childhood skills that can be taught with Book Related Activities.  Here are some of the reasons we create Activities to go with a Book.

Reasons for Creating Activities for Children’s Books

• Hands On Experiences
• Realistic
• Entertaining
• Builds Imagination
• Encourages Retelling
• Encourages Interacting with Text
• All levels can engage together
• Checks Comprehension
• Builds Confidence
• Reinforces Sight Words
• Builds Vocabulary
• Builds Communication Skills
• Learn new concepts
• Builds Fine Motor Skills
• Builds Gross Motor Skills
• Increases Visual Discrimination
• Develops Auditory Skills
• Helps Build Mathematical

How do you create an Activity to go with a book?  The ideas are limitless!  Here are a few tips to get you started.

Find a Theme, Concept, Topic of Focus, Letter, Sight Word or Word Family that the books relates to.   Then look up or create activities to go with it.  As you choose your activity focus on specific concepts you want your child to learn.  Sometimes it’s great to think about how can they play, make, create or go with that concept to involve all the different senses in learning.  Giving your child that’s hands on experience helps them to set into the book and truly understand those basic story elements of characters, setting, plot and solution too!

Here’s a little snapshot into how our story-time goes at our house.  As I look at a book I’m starting to think of all the various ways I can tie in various reading, writing, science, math and geography lessons into it in an age appropriate manner.  In this image my daughter is reading to her cousin in England, thought that was appropriate our guest post today!  As they’re reading about Fairies I’m starting to think about all the ways we can bring Fairies into learning.  We can play make believe fairies, count fairies, create our own fairies, write about fairies and learn about letter F.  The ideas are limitless with books.

Are you looking for a Book and Activity to get you started?  We invite you to our Love Books Page and you can always follow our Love Books Page on Pinterest too!  Do you cook with Books? We do, come check it out with Little Hands that Cook with Books. We’re also traveling Around the World Foods, Crafts and Books.  We even have our Active Babies and Toddlers reading! We hope you’ll join us for our Virtual Book Clubs this whole year!

Can you tell we LOVE BOOKS! Happy READING! WE can’t wait to see what activities you create to go along with your children’s books.