A Storybook Theatre – The Gruffalo

One of our favourite books is The Gruffalo, we know it very well and have done a few different ways of bringing the book to life. We recently got a newish copy of The Gruffalo to replace our very battered book (it was very well loved when I got it years ago).  Our old copy was falling to bits and not fit to pass on but I didn’t want to throw it out.  Initially I planned to frame some of the artwork for a book nook, but I then thought I could make a lightweight frame and use the illustrations as background for a finger puppet show.  The idea evolved as Luath and I worked and it turned into a theatre.


Supplies:
Medium weight cardboard
Plastic pocket
Scissors
Sellotape and or glue
Background
Puppets
1. I found a piece of cardboard that was almost perfect, nearly A4 in the middle, with two wings and a little balance piece at the base.  I cut the cardboard in half, then cut an aperture  a little smaller than the plastic pocket. Cut it out as one piece and save for later.

2.  Attach the plastic pocket to cardboard, leaving a gap at the side so the background can slide in and out.  Attach the pocket to the front so it stays flush.

3.  Attach the cardboard piece you cut for the aperture to the back of the plastic pocket – this gives it a little more strength and also reduces the light that falls on the background.

4. We added a stage later that day by using another piece of cardboard attached to the base.  I cut an area in the centre for the puppets to pop through.

5.  To make the theatre more stable I used the other half of the cardboard box, attaching it at the wings with clothes pegs,

6. Insert whatever you wish as your background.  You could use a photograph, drawn picture by you or little one, photocopy, printed image,colouring book pages, wallpaper, fabric or like us images from a almost fit for the bin book.

 
7.  Make your puppets (or use ones you already have).  We made quick paper and straw puppets.
 
8. Put on your show

       

I have already thought of so many different ways we can use this,  I also plan to make a few different sized lightweight frames that we can use directly over pages in books.

Shared with Tuesday tots and Read Explore Learn

Toddler kitchen - cookies

We picked up a Julia Donaldson book at the library that I hadn't heard of called "Night Monkey, Day Monkey".  Luath was immediately drawn to it and we have read it many times this week.  The day monkey learns about night and the night monkey learns about day.  The night monkey thinks he sees owls the colour of peas and carrots  and the day monkey sees a flying banana.  The other monkey corrects by saying "don't be daft haven't you heard of.... (parrot and moon in these cases). 

We have ended up doing quite a few night time inspired activities this week, including making some night creature cookies.  Luath loves helping in the kitchen, especially sitting on the counter to do so.

The cookie recipe is a basic one from the book "Baking with  Tiny Tots" by Becky Johnson

100g sugar

100g butter (we use olive oil spread)

250g plain flour

1 egg

vanilla extract (we used lemon)

1. Cream the sugar and butter.  The hand mixer was the one we used as kids.  My mum has only ever baked when she did so with us, so the mixer was passed on to me.

2.Break egg and add to bowl, along with vanilla extract and mix in.

3. Sift the flour into bowl and mix.  Make into a dough. cover and chill in fridge for 1 hour (we only chilled for a short time).

4.  Roll out dough.  We sang our rolling dough song (to the tune of row your boat)

"roll, roll, roll the dough

make it nice and flat

first we go this way

and theeeeennn that"

Next Luath's favourite part, cutting the cookies.

5.  Bake 180 C  10-12 mins.  We made some night and Halloween cookies.

Our cookies inspired by the book were bat, star, moon, owl and moth.

They were a nice treat for us all.

Shared with read learn explore at J Daniel4's mom

(Luath is 21 months)



A Pirate Adventure in the Bath, featuring Jelly

                  

This week’s theme is the sea, I had thought up this activity last week as a boat trip featuring Pirates, Mermaids, Sailors and whatever other sea related things we had been doing this week. I was aiming to sway our week and the bath adventure towards mermaids as I had seen a fantastic competition by Taming the Goblin to win a mermaid waldorf doll she had made.  However the Pirate theme has lasted longer than expected  (I have posted about our pirate lunch and walking the plank),so today became a Pirate adventure, in particular based around Luath's favourite book of the week "Tim, Ted and the Pirates".  A story about a boy and his Ted who drift off into their own adventure while the teacher reads a story. 

I thought it would be fun to combine our love of jelly (we’ve done a couple jelly based things lately, jelly playdough and jelly play in the bath, with a previous imaginary boat trip.    I  came up with a few different ways I could set up a sea themed boat ride in the bath. Realistically I have a daughter who is awake most of the hours I am, sleeps best if I am very nearby and wakens frequently at night, so most things are done with Luath by my side or at high speed and quietly!

Last night I made up a big tub of jelly.  I had wanted to fill it with treasure but they kept floating to the top.  I left some letter cutters floating at the top..  This morning once the jelly was set I pushed some more cookie cutters into the jelly.  I had also filled some ice cube moulds with jelly (yet again I couldn’t get the jelly out). 

A few nights ago I drew an underwater scene on some lining paper. I did this on the floor and with crayons so it is no work of art, but I was guessing it might not last long.  I attached this to the wall opposite the bath. (The drawings didn’t photograph well, but I have included them anyway and will upload a better photo once they are in Luath’s room)


some seaweed, a fish and a seahorse



a mermaid, a shoal of fish



jellyfish, treasure chest, a crab


I also drew a sea level scene, Luath helped me colour it in.  Well I coloured, she had  a few scribbles but mainly enjoyed walking along the picture.

  I attached this to the wall next to the bath.

Nessie, buoys with a cormorant drying it's wings

a diver, a boat

a canoeist, a lighthouse, rocks, seals, birds, a crab

I put some blue/sea life towels over the side of the bath and attached some undersea pictures we had drawn earlier in the week.  I placed a towel with fish over the undersea level of the toilet.  I hung up a duvet cover (that I specifically bought second-hand as a play mat) over the window and down to cover the bath taps and the toilet to sea level.  This wasn’t as effect as I hoped as it let in too much light.  I covered the radiator with a play mat, the floors with a bathmat, a throw and towels.

I then placed Luath’s bath in the bathtub, as this was to be her boat. I filled the bathtub with cold water coloured by some green jelly and food blue colouring to well below the rim of Luath’s bath.

I placed some towels over the sink to act as rocks.  I put our mermaid - this is actually a dress up doll that Luath got handed down from a cousin, for our previous boat trip adventure I had given the doll a mermaids tail (which I had made for Luath when she was a few months old for a party), we both liked the mermaid so she has stayed..  I covered the mirror with another seashore towel (we seem to have so many sea themed towels, this one is very old and is now a dog towel!)  I attached a parrot to a picture hook.

I added some sea creatures to the bath and the surroundings.  I had contemplated taking some dried seaweed from above the tide line, but changed my mind.  I cooked up some noodles and used that instead.  I had thought about some stones and shells, but the big shells around here tend to still have live seaweed attached and Luath has plenty interaction with stones everyday (this week she even picked a stone up to give it a cuddle).  I also added a treasure chest, filled with gold (sweet wrappers I have been saving for ages to use for art) and milk bottle tops.  I had used all the food colouring from the bottle so that went into the bath as a perfect message in a bottle.

I did this all quite quickly, Luath helped me, but still each time she came into the bathroom she said “wow” (she knows just what to say!)

Then the most important addition – Luath.  She was decked in her Pirate AIO nappy and  a vest, just what all the toddler pirates like to don.    . 

Luath had another look around and then I placed her in her bath.  She seemed happy for the first few minutes and then she wanted out and was quite upset.  I took her out and thought “oh well, we can try later”, but she actually wanted to go into the bathtub with everything and not be in her bath boat.  I added some hot water to make it more pleasant, stripped her (naked Pirates are all the rage) and in she went. 

The noodle seaweed was the first thing she grabbed.  I am sure she knew it was noodles but she went along with mummy and called it seaweed.  Next the jelly treasure tub.  This took a lot of exploring.  Taking our the cookie cutters, delving in to find more, adding other creatures to the mix, squeezing the jelly.  I told her she could eat it, but she wasn’t sure.  I showed her me trying some, again she wasn’t convinced, so she stuck her hand in and offered it to me.  After a little while she did try some, she had a few tastes, but not sure she liked it that much, or just found it more fun to play with than eat.

I read her “Tim, Ted and The Pirates”, and acted out the parts we could.  I used a teddy cake mould as Ted.  Once the story was over we opened the treasure chest, which gave Luath some more items to add to her Jelly.

Luath had enough by then, so our adventure was over.  I left some of the bathroom decorated so daddy could see it when he came home.  The pictures were undamaged.  I am going to draw round the outlines of each object in them so you can make out the picture a bit more clearly and then put them up in Luath’s room.  There is plenty space to add more images to both pictures.

We (and I do mean we) had lots of fun.  I am sad that the photos didn't come out as I would like to have a good visual memory (other than in my head) of activities like this.

(Luath is 17mths)

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taming the goblins mermaid project

A story walk with chalk

One of our summer bucket list experiences is to go for a story walk.  I have thought of a few ideas, some I am sure we will do, however they all involve some prep and props to carry.  Then this morning I suddenly thought I could use chalk – thank you the playing outside chalk link up for putting chalk to the front of my mind.

We often tell stories while we are out walking the dog.  We start our walks with me wearing Luath,  I try to give the dog a decent pace walk initially.  Some days Luath is happy just to bounce along, looking and talking.  Some days she starts singing or repeating words from a story, so we will do that.  Other days she is so desperate to get down I start reciting a story (either made up or from a favourite book), often involving us looking for things and this distracts her for a while.  The two favourites to tell in the woods are “The Gruffalo” and “Going on a bear hunt”.  I picked The Gruffalo for today’s story walk. 

First up at the side of the path, the mouse

Luath saw me drawing the mouse, but was so excited when we stepped back and there he was. 

All ready to start his walk in the deep dark woods.
            
We walked on a bit.  I said some of the story, and asked Luath what did the mouse see first.  When she said fox, then I started singing “we are looking for a fox, looking for a fox”.   We found him on the base of a tree, just above his underground house.

The fox and the mouse exchanged words and then on we went walking past the rocks where the Gruffalo enjoys roasted fox.  Again I asked Luath who the mouse met next and so next up we were “looking for an owl, looking for an owl”.  And we found him just below his treetop house

OK daddy said when he saw the photos it looked like a cat, but Luath told me it was an owl. The owl invited the mouse to his tree top house, but the mouse was off to meet a Gruffalo, and meeting him by a stream,(which is at our walks halfway point so we just pointed in the direction of the stream) 

We kept walking through the deep dark woods, there was a gap in the story, but we recapped on the story so far and then "we were looking for a snake". We came to a log pile house.

And met a snake

Who slid off at the mention of scrambled snake by a lake (there are four lochans in the wood so we pointed to the nearest one), 

Luath was getting keen to walk as this is the point in the woods where she usually gets down.  We just had time to spy the Gruffalo.

Normally our walk is a loop but today we about turned and retraced our steps so The Gruffalo could follow behind the mouse and meet all the creatures in the woods.  Luath spied the snake quickly.

I had forgotten which tree the Owl was on but we saw the fox and the mouse.  While we were walking back we stomped like a Gruffalo, flapped our wings like the owl, sneaked like the fox, were quiet like the mouse and slid like the snake – Luath when down on the ground to be a snake.

Luath also had a go at drawing with the chalk on some tree stumps (no photos as I was too busy keeping her safe).  I have an idea how she can be more involved with the drawing next time - I picked up some bark and some washed down slate.  It was getting too near our lunchtime to try that today.

What a fun outing and it was so good that all I had to do for preparation was put some chalk in a bag.  We will definitely do this again.  The Gruffalo fits in well, especially as all the creatures are lurking in our woods, we have seen field mice in the stone dyke, daddy has seen an owl, I think there are grass snakes, there are foxes about (they are more shy than their town cousins) and of course The Gruffalo is there somewhere.  I am thinking of other stories we can try out.

(Luath is 17 months)

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