Tag: creative writing

‘A Snowy Day’ Extension

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Understanding Snow (3)

We’ve had fun playing with the snow lately, whether in it or just with our hands, or whether with the real stuff or the fake stuff. But thanks to a unit from Travis’s Snowed Inn Raddish Kids kit, we got a little more scientific about snow today. What is snow and what are its properties, and how is snow changing because of global warming?

A useful story for exploring all this is the winter classic The Snowy Day, and I asked Travis to pause and think at the end about the snow ball in the boy’s pocket. Travis could readily answer that it would melt, but why?

Understanding Snow (1)

So next he watched a video on “Snowflake Bentley”, the first person to capture snowflakes on camera. The video explores more both about how snowflakes form and how they melt.

Understanding Snow (2)

Take a moment here to pause and ask your child which of the two stories is fiction and which is non-fiction, a nice refresher on the two definitions.

After that, I challenged Travis to imagine what might happen next in The Snowy Day. What if the next few pages were from the boy’s friend’s point of view? The idea was challenging for a first grader (Travis’s extension involved magical keys and portals to another universe), but older kids can delve into explaining how snowflakes form and how they melt on their storybook pages.

Understanding Snow (4)

Travis then watched a news clip on the Inuits and how their way of life is changing due to climate change. There were many suggested extensions here that make sense for older kids, such as writing a poem or song about snowflake formation; reading about the 50 different Inuit words for snow; or writing a first-person narrative imagining life from the point of view of an Inuit child.

Understanding Snow (7)

For my first grader, we finished up simply by making a brief comic book about a sled dog and the icy landscape. We may delve more into all these topics again once Travis is older!

Understanding Snow (6)

School Milk Flipbook

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Milk Flipbook (6)

Travis helped make several lunches this month thanks to his Raddish Kids Lunchtime Love crate, a perfect theme for back-to-school in September. We finished up with this lesson plan.

To start, we played “I’m going on a picnic” to get thinking about different foods in a lunchbox, particularly those that travel well. A basket of toy food as prompts helped initially, but Travis was bored after a few rounds of back-and-forth. Instead, we turned to the web for the next part of the lesson.

Milk Flipbook (1)

Raddish provided links for a read-aloud about how common lunch foods get on the plate. Because the book was heavy on dairy, we also watched vegan-friendly videos about almond milk and soy milk.

Milk Flipbook (2)

Next Travis got to be an author! The assignment was to make a flipbook about the journey of an almond from the tree to the carton at the store. I encouraged him to put on his imaginative cap and pretend the story was from the point of view of the almond, although this was a bit of a stretch for my first grader.

Milk Flipbook (4)

He concentrated more on just drawing the pictures, and I added words.

Milk Flipbook (5)

There were also fun videos to watch on school lunches around the world. Big kids can extend the lesson much further, here, perhaps by designing an international menu for their school cafeteria

For a hands-on extension, we returned to an old favorite: growing new vegetables from kitchen scraps. This works fantastically with green onions, so after we used a bunch from the store, we placed the bulbs in a small dish of fresh water. You should see new growth by morning!

Regrow Food Scraps

Finally, Travis was in charge of designing his own perfect after-school snack in Raddish’s Create-a-Snack Challenge. I showed him the list of possible ingredients, and he selected: hummus, cheese slices, tortillas, strawberries, and tomatoes. The possibilities were growing already.

Snack Challenge (1)

After a trip to the store, he created the following: Hummus-Cheese-Tortilla Bites.

Snack Challenge (2)

I loved watching him turn into a little chef as we layered hummus on small squares of tortilla, topped each with a piece of Violife cheddar, and then topped that off with tomato.

Snack Challenge (4)

He got fancy and added strawberries to a few. An interesting flavor combination!

Snack Challenge (3)

I haven’t seen him enjoy snack so much in ages, so this was a great activity on the part of Raddish.

Storytelling, Two Ways

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Tell Story (4)

We followed up our game of storytelling stones with two more neat games that will help activate your budding storyteller’s creativity, as well as foster a sense of narration and plot.

The first involved using index cards with pictures to fill in a line and change familiar stories in silly ways!

Fill In Story (1)

I cut pictures from magazines and glued to index cards. You can add the word on the other side of the card, for preschoolers who are beginning to read.

Place the cards in a hat, and then pull out a favorite book – it helps if it is a story your child knows well, so they can anticipate the next word or line.

Fill In Story (3)

At various points in the story, stop and pull a card from the hat, changing the story as needed. For example, “If you give a mouse a cookie…” might become “If you give a mouse a car…”

Fill In Story (2)

Travis couldn’t stop laughing, and requested several books in a row.

Next we started a tag-team style story. I prompted Travis with a sentence, and then asked him what he thought might happen next. The first few times I attempted the game, he didn’t get it… until I presented him with a little booklet to draw what was happening.

 

Tell Story (3)

Don’t be surprised or dismayed if the story doesn’t go how you had planned. I started what I thought might be a sweet story about a bear, and Travis said the bear had fire coming from him!

Tell Story (1)

Hey, at least it was creative! He wanted to keep drawing and making up stories (some nonsensical, others more clearly in story format) until all the yellow paper had been colored in.

Fill In Story (5)

I will definitely continue both these games as Travis gets older.