wave

Avery loved hearing the story of a little girl's exciting experience at the beach in Suzy Lee's stunningly illustrated wordless story book, Wave. 

From lectures, reading articles, collaborating with colleagues and working with children on improving their language skills, I've learned what invaluable tools wordless story books are.  Telling and retelling a story multiple times with a wordless story book helps children learn a variety of vocabulary words, synonyms and sentence structures.  It helps teach children the elements of a story--characters, setting, problem, resolution, etc.  When you revisit stories and retell them, you talk about different little aspects of a story that you didn't talk about the last time you read it because you might pick up on other details in the pictures or nuances in the story.  When different people tell a child the story, the child hears and is exposed to different narratives, points of view and different sets of vocabulary.  If anyone is interested in reading more on the subject, an article on wordless story books can be found here.  This is one enjoyable way for everyone to get involved in a child's education.   Happy storytelling!

Thanks to The Land of Nod for sending us a copy of Wave.

alice in wonderland party: the setting

This is the second post on the Alice in Wonderland party designed by my cousin Amy.  The first post about the menu can be found here.  For the party, Amy created a marvelous wonderland, including a fantastic painted landscape, bread-and-butterflies, momeraths, colorful paper lanterns, a garland made out of playing cards, white rose bushes painted red, and playing card soldiers.  One last very important note: don't step on the momeraths!

straw necklaces

If you have leftover straws from a party, you can make necklaces with them, which is also a great fine motor activity for preschoolers.  The original idea can be found at Real Simple.  All you need are a few paper or plastic straws and twine or string.  Cut up the straws into little pieces and string them onto your twine to make a necklace or bracelet.  My daughter Avery had fun choosing different colors for her necklace that ended up being a wreath for her hair.  You can also use the straw bits to practice letter formation and talk about letter names and sounds.  This post was originally published in my summer series for Mom*tog.