Winning Families: Family Read Aloud

Family Read Aloud Ideas

By Shannon

We love reading books aloud here at my house. It is a fun way for both girls of varying ages to have "read" the same book. I like to incorporate activities to not only make the book more fun but make the book/read aloud time more memorable.

Emmaline and the Bunny by Katherine Hannigan

 

Emmaline wants a bunny, but Emmaline lives on Shipshape Street in the town of Neatasapin. Enforcing the tidiness is Mayor Oliphant, who insists that children be silent and spotless and houses be spick-and-span. The intimidated electorate adheres to his edicts. But Emmaline, a puddle splasher and silly-phrase shouter (“Dinglederrydee!”) is an anomaly, albeit a lonely one, since the other kids won’t play with her. So she seeks out a wild bunny, which she finds, and loses, and finds again, and in the process changes both her parents and her town. Told in very short chapters and using language in unusual ways, this is a small delight, cunningly illustrated by Hannigan’s own sweet watercolors, reminiscent of Beatrix Potter’s works. The fun wordplay is just the thing to get new readers going, but most children will simply enjoy listening to the story—again and again.

 

Some Fun Activities:

• Print off a black and white picture of your child and have them color their clothes with markers (Go to Crayola.com and go into their Lights, Camera, Color to make your color sheets.  Use the code PRQWDSPY - it is good for 24 hours after you enter it.  Or go into flickr, upload your picture, then edit it.  Select Create -> Effects and then make them pencil sketches.)
• Make Bunny Ear Headband
• Cut out a bunny from posterboard and glue cotton balls on to make a fluffy bunny
• Cut out a bunny from posterboard and paint with shaving cream/glue mixture to make a puffy paint bunny.
• Sing Little Bunny Foo Foo (we love this version and you can listen to it for free)
• Make Carrot Salad

Here are our color sheets.  The top 2 are from flickr/picnik upload and made into pencil sketches. The bottom 2 are from crayola. We use flickr since it's free (can't beat free), but I wanted to offer another option for you to be able to try out crayola's new activity.

~Shannon, aka Gidget and Froggi's Mom, blogs over at Welcome To Our Wonderland, where you'll find lots of book-related activities and book reviews.
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