Goldilocks and the Three Bears

A little while back I answered a tweet on Twitter from @babysigningmum who was looking for some puppets - specifically Goldilocks and the Three Bears and I showed her these ones and promised to order them in as a special for her.

They arrived this week in a lovely big fabric drawstring bag (ideal for a story sack) and I have to say they are FABULOUS and look even better in real life. I am going to be ordering some more - so watch the website's new products page or contact me directly if you want a set!

New Products: People Who Help Us Glove Puppets

We are pleased to announce that Littlesheep Learning now stock even more of the popular flat people who help us glove puppets adding the postman, keeper and farmer to the range, plus the bargain people who help us complete set of nine puppets.

These simple flat glove puppets are a fantastic resource for both role play and teaching about occupations / jobs people do and are great for inclusion in story sacks. Size 28cm tall.

Operation Play Time - Nursery Rhymes

It's day two of Operation Playtime - and todays challenge is Record a nursery rhyme or song.

We love songs and rhymes and have a special game that we play to choose which ones to sing so I thought I would share it with you!

We have a bag - a song sack (a drawstring bag - like the type children use to store PE kit in at school) and in it we put a collection of objects that relate to nursery rhymes. We take them out one by one and the children have to 'guess the rhyme' and then we sing.

Examples include:

Toy boat - Row, row, row the boat
Toy teapot - I'm a little teapot
Bath duck - Five little ducks
Pretend spider - Incy Wincy Spider
Toy bus - The Wheels on the Bus
'10 in the Bed' song Mitts - 10 in the bed
Star - Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Doctor puppet - Miss Polly had a Dolly
Clock - Hickory Dickory Dock
Toy sheep - Baa Baa Black Sheep
Teddy - Round and round the Garden Like a Teddy Bear

I'm sure you get the idea!

New Products: Fantastic Fairy Tale Puppets

We have now added four new sets of story puppets - Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and The Three Billy Goats Gruff to our range of puppets.

These fantastic puppet sets are come with a detailed story card to help you tell the story of the fairy tale and contains the main characters you would expect to find in the enchanting favourite story.



These puppet sets are great for children learning traditional tales, beginning role play activities and are ideal for giving as a gift coming in it's very own see-through PVC handy bag / carry case. They are also a great for inclusion in story sacks.

We also now have all of the other story sets: Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Little Red Riding Hood back in stock.

Developing Imagination / Story Skills

I was reading a post on a parenting forum yesterday about encouraging children's imaginative development and there were some great ideas so I thought I'd share some with you.

Make sure that you spend time reading and sharing a variety of different books, stories and rhymes because the more ideas your child comes into contact with the more ideas they have to build on when creating their own stories. Ask questions when sharing stories; for example, why do you think that happened? how did he feel? what do you think will happen next?

Try to think imaginatively yourself when showing you child stories, use story sacks to develop story ideas. Gather props relating to stories for example puppets and games and use these to enact the stories. Make props such as wooden spoon puppets, playdoh food and cardboard box houses to help you.

For children who really struggle with writing / drawing / thinking imaginatively the Nonsenses puzzle. These puzzles encourage reading and building sentences; each card has a character, place or an action and by mixing the beginning, middle and end pieces you can have hours of fun as you try to compete to come up with the silliest sentences possible!

Make stories up co-operatively; depending on your child's drawing / writing ability there are several ways you can do it. The most simple way is to do it orally, you start a story and then take it turn to say a sentence or part of a sentence and see how silly it can get and how much detail you can put into it. If your child likes drawing you can make a story board by drawing squares on paper (start with just a few squares and then build up to longer ones as your child gets more confident) and taking it in turns to draw the next picture in the story. If you child struggles with drawing you could ask them to tell you what to draw and draw if for them. Lastly you can create stories by writing ideas down, take a strip of paper each and write down a character, fold it over and swap and add a location, fold and swap again and add an activity, fold and swap etc building up ideas and then open them out to see what has happened.

Draw random shapes / lines on a piece of paper and see what your child can make them become, for example a square could become a house, a circle could be made into a pig and a triangle could become the sail of a boat or the top of a rocket a wavy line could become the sea or turned into a caterpillar. This a great game for children who need to practice their fine motor and drawing skills too.

As with all learning activities the key is to keep it fun.

Puppets now available at Littlesheep Learning

I've just realised I didn't write a blog post a few weeks ago that I kept meaning to write and that was about my trip to the Autumn Fair - a massive trade fair at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham. I spent a day networking with other WAHMs (the people behind Knot Just Jigs, PinkFairyCake, Boutiquetoyou, Gifts for Little People, Little Milestones, Kiddymania - shout if I've left you out?) and the best part of the day was sourcing some new products, the first of which - some lovely puppets have now arrived and are available to buy at Littlesheep Learning.

These puppets are great for use in Story Sacks, to provide a visual reference point and to make learning fun.

People Who Help Us Teaching Mitt
A great glove pupppet for learning about occupations and the jobs people do. The puppet fits an adults hand and includes the following roles: fireman, policeman, postman, nurse and doctor.

Expressions Teaching Mitt
A fabulous glove puppet for talking about emotions; featuring happy, sad, angry, surprised and worried.

Plus Five Little Ducks, Five Little Speckled Frogs and Ten in a Bed to provide a visual aid when singing these favourite counting rhymes.

We have also added story puppets and first animal finger puppets - more about them another day!

Story Sacks

Yesterday I had an email from Michelle who owns Chelltune asking if I had any articles / experience about story sacks, I believe she is looking at them from a visual learning point of view with her signing books and finger puppets. I've seen them used in classroom situations when working with children with autism and then used the resources from the sacks in small groups / individual work to help the children understand the book and the surrounding topics and vocabulary. Many of the resources that we sell at Littlesheep Learning could be incorporated into story sacks and we are currently researching some new products and eventually hope to have some of our very own style of sack - "Story Sack Topic Packs" including some of our favourite resources.

Here is some information about Story Sacks, their use and their assembly to get you started!

What is a Story Sack?
A story sack is a teaching and learning resource. Typically it is a large cloth bag containing a children’s book along with supporting materials to help make sharing the book more interesting and engaging.

Why make Story Sacks?
Story sacks are a fun way for carers and children to share stories together. They were developed by Neil Griffiths as a popular, non-threatening way of encouraging carers to start to share stories with their children in a way that is positive, theatrical, special, interactive and fun.

Who Uses Story Sacks?
Originally it was mainly schools and nurseries that used story sacks, however, they are now increasing used by other groups such as childminders, libraries, health visitors, speech therapists, social workers, children’s hospitals, prisons, family centres and adult learners.

How do you make a Story Sack?
Start with a bag – it doesn’t have to be a fancy one, infact you can make a story box or basket if that is more convenient. It’s just something to contain all the resources in one place.

Next you need to choose your story. The story you pick will depend on the child or children you are making the sack for and any learning objectives you want them to gain from the sack. When making your first story sack choose a favourite story – it will make it easier to think of things to add to the sack!

Then you need to fill the sack! With some stories the possibilities for items will seem endless and with others you will need to be more creative. Here are some of the things that are often included:

• soft toys / puppets of the main characters
• costumes / props / scenery / photos to support the story
• an audio tape / CD of the story
• a video of the story or related material
• a language based game
• a related non-fiction book
• craft and activity ideas / colouring pages

When choosing items for your story sack, read and re-read your story, what are the themes, who are the main characters / where is it set / does it use colours / counting / letter sounds / listening skills. How could you use it as the basis of non-fiction work; can you incorporate first experiences, new vocabulary and other topic based activities. What art and craft ideas can you think of that link in with the book you have chosen - if you search for the title of the book you want to base your sack around you can often find example activities and colouring pages!

Here are some quick ideas I've had for some contents for story sacks based around popular books to get you started:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle (Puffin Books)

• Soft toy caterpillar / butterfly
• Lifecycle of a butterfly sequencing cards
• Days of the week / number sequencing cards
• Play food props
• Non-fiction book about caterpillars and butterflies
• Activity ideas / colouring sheets including suggestions for fruit printing and painting butterfly pictures
  

Peace at Last, Jill Murphy (Walker Books)

• Three bears
• Puppets for the other animals in the story, e.g owl / cat
• Environmental sounds listening game; for example Orchard Toys Crash, Bang Wallop! or Cock-a-doodle-moo! or the listening lotto game Soundtracks
• Activity ideas / colouring sheets including making paper aeroplanes / clock faces

Little Red Riding Hood, Heather Amery (Usborne Books)

• A doll dressed as Little Red Riding Hood
• Puppets for the Wolf / Grandma / Woodcutter
• A basket with pretend cakes / flowers
• Wolf mask / Red Riding Hood’s red cloak / Granny's glasses / shawl for dressing up as the characters
• Pictures of forest / grandma’s house
• Non fiction books about wolves / forest wildlife
• Activity ideas / Colouring sheets including making cakes for Grandma!

Incey Wincey Spider, Annie Kubler (Child’s Play)

• Spider finger puppet
• Length of drain pipe
• Weather pictures / symbols
• Non-fiction books about weather / spiders
• Orchard Toys Insey Winsey Spider game

If you are making your story sacks to lend to children to take out of the setting also include some learning targets, a short guide to questions to ask / discussion points to consider and other ideas to extend the activity. Finally it is worth laminating the activity idea cards to protect them and including a list of what is in the bag so that nothing gets lost!

Story sacks are also ideal for sharing popular dual language books in areas where people speak English as an additional language.

If you are still stuck for ideas feel free to ask! I'd also love to hear about your favourite story sacks and resources and how you've used them so please add your comments below!