This month’s virtual book club for kids author is Julia Donaldson. I owned a few of her books years before Luath was born. I thought they were great books to share with visiting kids. Our Julia Donaldson library has grown, mainly as my mum bought a ten book collection and Luath, daddy and I have been receiving them as birthday presents. Luath’s favourite book of the week is often a Julia Donaldson one, either one of our own or a library book – there have been a few of her books we haven’t liked but not many.
A new book to us is Sharing a Shell. It has a rhyming text with bright illustrations. It has a lovely theme about friendship. Any story that has links to the sea suits us as we live by a sea loch. We don’t have any rock pools near our house however you can see crabs (mostly dead and washed up though) and plenty of shells. We took the bandy net out when there was a low tide. We found one shell with an inhabitant, lots of seaweed, limpets and empty shells.
Our Rock Pool
I made from felt, the three main characters from the story, along with a green fish who features and a starfish. I made the anemone or blob first, Luath immediately knew who it was but said it had no eyes and needed googly eyes. I also added a fish Luath and I had made at a group we attend.
We made a water pool by covering a cut cereal box with tinfoil. A mirror would have been better but we don’t have any safety mirrors and I couldn’t be sure stones weren’t going to fall into the pool.
We already have some shells and stones. We collected some dead seaweed which I washed. I placed these on a tray next to the pool.
The first time I set things up Luath was more interested in taking the story characters around the room. Then she began to investigate the stones, shells and seaweed. She decided to put these back into the jars the shells and stones are kept in.
The following day I laid all the objects out again but this time I began to make a rock pool. Luath helped a little but she still was more interested in the individual pieces than their combined vision. I have kept the tinfoil pool as I am sure we will use it in the future to repeat this or something else.
One thing Luath does enjoy is putting the crab and bristle worm into a shell and having the anemone on top. She also enjoys pretending the anemone is stinging you, like it does in the book to scare fish away. I have stored the felt figures so she can easily access them.
Previous Julia Donaldson Posts
We have done quite a lot of activities inspired by Julia Donaldson books, including some I have posted: a story walk with chalk and a play theatre (The Gruffalo), going on a pretend boat trip (Jack and the Flum Flum tree), making day and night cookies (Night Monkey, Day Monkey), making and hunting glittery ladybirds (What the Ladybird Heard), outdoor play (Stick Man)
(Luath was 25 months)
The felt creatures are a great idea! Thank you so much for sharing so many of the Julia Donaldson books that you have enjoyed with your daughter - we are adding them to our reading list :)
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