Skip to main content

Super Storytelling


I was planning on doing experiments this week on the water cycle because Briana has been asking a lot about why it rains.  It has been a very rainy Fall here.  Of course, it doesn’t rain at all this week.  The one time I was counting on rain!  I check the weather forecast and see that it’s going to rain most of next week, so I decide to postpone rain experiments until next week.

So what to do this week? Last week my cousin-in-law, Jessica, whose PhD work was on teaching kids to read with the help of media, commented on my Beginning the Basics blog that, among other things, I should encourage story telling to help my girls with reading comprehension.  Briana likes to make up stories, usually so that she can talk when she doesn’t want anyone else to talk.  She interrupts my husband and I’s conversations all the time and tells us that we interrupted the story she was telling.  When we ask her what her story was, she tells us some variation on a princess story or a story about Lightning McQueen (from the Cars movie), usually with something she’s been curious about added in.  I think she likes working through how things work in her mind that way.  So I decided that we should write those down for posterity.  In so doing, I figure that Briana can work on reading comprehension and get a feel for how books are made, and Abby can work on her fine motor skills as our illustrator.

To start the morning off right, I make a fun breakfast – fruit and yogurt salad shaped to look like a girl in a dress reading and a pancake with peanut butter that has jelly writing on it to look like a book.  The quickest way to do the writing is to scoop some jelly into a Ziploc bag and push all of the jelly into one of the bottom corners (without the zipper part).  Cut a tiny bit off of the corner and squeeze the jelly out – instant piping bag.  I’m no artist, but the kids thought it was cute.  “I looove your silly breakfast, Mommy!” Bree exclaims multiple time throughout breakfast.



Over the weekend we started making stories so my husband could do some with us.  I get out some off-white construction paper and folded it like a book.  Briana tells the story while I write it down.  As we go, I spell out key words so that she can watch me write them.  When I finish writing out each page, I leave the page on the table and the kids and my husband illustrate our pages.

The Princess and the Trash Can
By Briana

Once upon a time there was a princess.
She didn’t want to throw her trash away.
Along came a handsome prince.
He threw her trash away because she didn’t want to.
The garbage truck came.
They put the trash in the back.
The prince and the princess got in the front.
They drove to the dancing place.
They had a dancing party and they lived happily ever after.
THE END.

We passed 3 garbage trucks driving down the highway a few days earlier and she’s been asking a lot of questions about how the garbage gets in the truck and where it goes and why the garbage men want our trash, etc., so I guess that’s still top of mind for her.

Then I staple the pages together into a book and we read it.



Regardless of the overall plot that if you clean up after my diva so she doesn’t have to and then take her dancing, you’ll have her heart forever, I think this is a pretty good story.  The princess had a problem that was resolved.  The story had a beginning, middle, and end. 

The kids are delighted!  We read the book about 30 times throughout the day.  Briana wants to write another book so we write down her Lightning McQueen story – ‘The Story of the Cars’.  And we write ‘The Story About Snacks’ for Abby because she keeps saying “Snack.  Snack.”, although  I don’t think that she was really asking us to write that story.  I think she’s hungry, so we have a snack.   We also do one just for Abby called ‘Abigail’s Picture Book’ that Abby colors with some help from Briana.  The girls working together with no pushing or screaming is worth the whole activity in my mind!



There was one other “book” that I thought the kids would have a blast making.  Letters to Santa.  Bree started out by telling me that she could write all of our letters for Santa and proceeded to try to write a ‘B’, an ‘A’, and an ‘M’ for Briana, Abigail, and Mommy.  That cracked me up.  So I explain who Santa is and why we’re writing him a letter and what the letter should be like.  We then get out the Target, Toys R Us, and Pottery Barn Kids Christmas catalogs that have come to the house.  The kids point to what they want and I take out the scissors and cut the pictures out for them.  They tape them down to red construction paper with double sided tape and I write notes about what they were thinking (like we couldn’t find a picture of the Geotrax Lightning McQueen set, so we cut out a picture of a Thomas the train track set and I write “the Lightning McQueen one” by it).  They color and glitter up their letters to Santa and make them “just right”.  Abby just kept saying “A book. A book.” over and over, and tearing and/or eating her letter to Santa, so Briana picked out some things to put on Abby’s list for her.  Yeah, now I have a shopping list J

My Briana has such a big heart that she asked “Mommy, you’ve been a great Mommy this year.  Why don’t you get to make a Santa letter?”  I told her that Santa only brings toys to good little girls and boys.  “Poor Mommy!  Let’s make you a list just in case he gets some for mommies this time.” Then she asks me to cut out a dinosaur for her to tape to my page because I looove dinosaurs.  Then she decides we should do one for Daddy.  Briana’s exact wording for Daddy’s letter:

“Dear Santa, My Daddy has been a great Daddy and he’s been good at work.  That’s why we need to buy him turquoise and mermaids because he loves that.” 

OMG, I’m cracking up all over again while typing that out.  Turquoise and mermaids?!  I guess she only sees her Daddy playing with her things so she assumes that’s what he likes.  By the way, any friends of my husband who are reading this, be nice to him since he kindly agreed to let me put Bree’s letter for him in my blog!!  Eventually she adds a green backpack, a Spiderman plate set, Kinex (because “Daddy looooves building things.”) and an Eagles (football team) shirt to his letter.

Before naptime, we read ‘The Princess and the Trash Can’ again.  I’m so happy to see the girls enjoying the fruits of their labor.

Thanks Jess!!

<3 Pedigreed Housewife

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 10, 2010 at 4:00 PM

    This just made my day, no, my week! How fantastic!!!!! Love that I helped inspire such a FABULOUS activity :) Love it, love it, love it!

    And, the fact that Briana is suggesting mermaids for Matt is even sweeter than you might realize. For kids her age, they have a hard time taking the perspective of another person (it's a really tough cognitive skill that takes awhile to develop ... like 6/7 yo before they can grasp this). Anyway, what they can do is think about what they like and figure mommy and daddy will like that too. So when they want to give you gifts that they love, it's really meaningful b/c they are picking what is the BEST gift to them and assuming it will be the BEST for you as well. When kids want to give parents something that is their favorite (a toy, a coloring book, a mermaid), it is one of the most meaningful ways that they can show a parent how important they are to them.

    So, Matt should be thrilled that his daughter wants to give him a mermaid and you a dinosaur -it's a testament to what awesome parents you are.

    Jess :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pedigreed HousewifeNovember 10, 2010 at 4:54 PM

    Jess, the feeling is mutual. You just made my day by saying how much it appears that Bree loves us. It made me tear up :) Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Helping Hands Olympics

As the school year starts to come to a close, and we prepare for next year, I’ve been going to many preparatory meetings at the kids’ school about next year.   Of all of the information I was inundated with, one alarming fact, which was actually said offhand in response to a question, stuck out.   Many kids nowadays don’t have the coordination and hand strength to tie their shoes or even to write.   Apparently when we substitute things like climbing trees for video games and written letters for emails, our kids are losing the muscles in their hands.   It was said that most kids by what I think was 3 rd grade don’t have the muscles in their hands to write a multiple page paper at one sitting.   It was also said that most Kindergarteners not only can’t tie their shoes, but have never even been presented with the opportunity to try to tie their shoes in today’s world of slip-ons and Velcro.   That’s really alarming (and sociologically interesting) to me! ...
3 comments
Read more

A Breath of Fresh Air

While we were on a Look and See Adventure this week (for some reason these never seem to get old to any of us), we came across a big open field with trees lining the back of the field.   It was breathtaking and there was no traffic on the road so we pulled over to admire nature’s beauty for a few minutes.   Briana asked me why there are no trees on the field part and I told her that someone most likely chopped them down.   She wanted to know why someone would cut down a tree so I told her that we make paper and lots of things out of trees.   She followed up by asking why didn’t they cut down all the trees then and make more paper.   I told her that we didn’t want to cut down all of the trees because they give us air to breathe and they give all the little squirrels, that Abby was cooing are “so cute”, some place to live.   As we drove along, Briana kept asking about how and why we breathe trees and I explained to her that we breathe out carbon dioxide an...
3 comments
Read more

Rhythm Nation

Can rhythm be taught? I hope so. Both of my kids are very excited about their competitive cheer and competitive hip hop teams, and my youngest added ballet to that recently. The kiddies want to dance; the parents lack the necessary genes. But I firmly believe that talent and ability only change your starting point; hard work, determination, passion, and not letting that starting point stop you determine the finish. If my kids want to be dancers, then dancers they shall be. So, where should a rhythm-less parent start? Googling rhythm activities for kids got me a lot of what their violin (Briana) and piano (Abigail) teachers do - read some sheet music and clap out the beat. We do that, and we do it well. The kids have been in various music classes since about 1 year old, mostly for fun and socialization, and both read music well for their ages. The problem is, the kids are like me. I am a master chair dancer. If you see me dancing in my seat, you might even think I'm quite good (...
Post a Comment
Read more