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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Cerys Parker
Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, high school teacher and mum. Realising that life doesn't have to be put on hold and you don't just have to survive whilst the kids are young she shares ideas to inspire you to LIVE with the kids, with activities to do together, recipes to cook and enjoy and family travel to make memories to last a lifetime.
Kate says
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!
cuddles & muddles & muddy puddles says
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 🙂
Lauren@SAHM I am says
What a great learning opportunity about bug body parts, and your playdough set up looks so inviting and colourful!
Trisha @ Inspiration Laboratories says
Looks like such a fun book. I'll have to hunt it down!