Wordy Wednesday: Room On the Broom and A Look At G's Hearing Aids

Every Wednesday I will post a great book for you and your child to read together. There will often be a simple craft or project to go with it to further promote reading comprehension, vocabulary, and communication.

I have to thank my Mom for yet another fantastic addition to our Halloween collection of books:

Room On the Broom by: Julia Donaldson

This is such a fantastic story with the cutest little characters you’ve ever seen. The illustrations are lovely and the rhyming nature of the words are perfect for book loving toddlers.

Since we’ve been reading this book on repeat, complete with character voices and imitations to match, I decided to make some shadow puppets to bring the story to life even more. Lilly loves puppets and puppet shows so I knew she’d be into this one big time.

All you need is some card stock (any color but black makes life easier), an exacto knife, some drawing paper and a writing utensil, some popsicle sticks/lollipop sticks/wooden skewers and tape or glue.

Draw your characters on drawing paper first (you can trace the pages in the book if you can see that well, or just eyeball your best outline versions like I did). Kids have awesome imaginations so any “kind of sort of looks like…” shapes work- you don’t need to get fancy. It’s like looking at the clouds-your kids will see what you want them to see and fill in any gaps in your drawing skills with their imagination.

Lay your thin paper over the card stock and cut them both out at the same time. I had to color mine black with a sharpie but if you are better prepared and already have black card stock then you are good to go. Tape or glue your sticks to the shadow figures and TA DA! Your puppets are ready.

I only have these guys done so far. Still want to make the dragon and the swamp monster but I’ll save those for later.

Use a flashlight against the wall or set up a little shadow puppet theater with a thin bed sheet 🙂 guaranteed fun. I already let Lilly see the ones I have finished, and as I type she is sitting on the floor next to me playing with the puppets, retelling the story to herself from memory. This type of reading recall and comprehension is important to practice with children- even at such a young age. So many standardized tests kids will face in the future stress reading comprehension and main idea summarization. Never too early to start guiding those learning processes at home.

Happy playing!

Don’t forget to send me pictures if you make our Wordy Wednesday projects with your own littles! Hashtag #wordywednesday @SweeterSideMom on twitter and instagram. Happy Wednesday all!

Got a great kids book suggestion for my Wordy Wednesday posts? A family favorite that your child would like to make a craft about? Leave me a comment! We are always on the hunt for new books to read!

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And the hearing aids. Ugh. I don’t have much to say about them yet except that they are trying my patience and are trickier to get in/out/on/off than I thought. Grace is so wiggly, the helmet is always in the way, and they seem to always be ringing. It’s driving me (and the Dog) nuts. But we’ll adjust. It’s adorable to see her face when the aids are turned on. It’s like she’s saying, “WOAH!” with her little eyes and then she smiles. So that’s all that matters.

Getting a lesson from Jess, Gracie’s audiologist.

Listening…

Trying to get the second one in.

She was a little tired and frustrated too.

So we snuggled for a little longer than usual last night. Enjoying a quiet house and a warm blanket. We’ll figure it out, sweet girl. They’ll be second skin in no time at all.