Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Pretend play with small worlds: What the ladybird heard

Once upon a farm lived a fat red hen
A duck in a pond and a goose in a pen

So begins one of our favorite stories by Julia Donaldson - "What the ladybird heard"

Julia Donaldson's best known book is the gruffalo, a story which we have read many times until the kids are totally bored of it (and I could recite it in my sleep)

But I prefer her works with Lydia Monks much more. We have borrowed What the ladybird heard multiple times from the library and this time, I went over with the girls on the farm map the actual plan and how the animals tricked the thieves. This is the first time that the girls really appreciated the cunningness and the humor of the story. So after the success of Pride rock, we decided to build a farm model heavily inspired (read plagiarized) from the book.

First I drew out (read copied) all the animal pictures from the book. Then Anjali helped me to color them. She colored the cow green. Then we recycled an old shoe box into a farmhouse which the girls helped me to paint. That. incidentally, was the painting activity from the 30 days thingy.

Anjali helped me to cut out some animals and I cut the rest out yesterday morning when the girls were sleeping. I filed the whole thing away for the day and the girls apparently thought that i had thrown the animals away and gave husband a very hard time about it when I was at work.

This morning, we set up our first prototype. We will be continuing work on this over the next few days, but this is what happened.



"Anjali forgot to color the sheep", said Sophia, who had woken up early. So we put cotton on it and made the wooly sheep



This is the duck pond, which Sophia colored green



A pretty little farmhouse with the animals in the background and Noah from the Fisher Price Ark acting out the role of the farmer


I went to take a shower and Sophia realized something, so she came after me.

"Mummy, there are two thieves in the story", she said.

By that time, Anjali had woken up and husband and Anjali worked together on hefty Hugh and Lanky Len



Anjali's scissor skills have improved tremendously and I admit that husband's drawing skills are better than mine



"We need a panda car!" exclaims my three year old. I got an old milk carton which she helped me paint black. It is currently drying. I promised to help her fit wheels and make it into a panda car to throe the thieves in

1 comment:

  1. Love your cardboard pretend town. This is so great for a kids imagination. They will have hours of fun here I am sure. I am a new follower from It's Playtime. Vicky from Mess For Less

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