Today for Time to Read Tuesday, I put together a storytelling basket for the book Goodnight Moon. Buddy has done discovery baskets of different objects before and loved it, so I figured this would be an activity he would enjoy. The reading teacher in me loved figuring out a book related activity that would be appropriate for my one year old.
This picture shows everything I put into the basket. All of these were items that were already in our house. I had to go digging in our ornaments for the “toy house”, and I cut out the moon out of a cereal box and covered it in foil. For the line “Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere,” I put some star beads in a water bottle. (The bottle has stars and air, and when it’s shaken, it makes noise.) The flashlight is supposed to be the light from the room, Mickey is supposed to be the “young mouse”, and the watch is for the clocks in the room.
We started by reading the book together. Then I took Buddy over to the basket of goodies. For each item he pulled out, I said “Goodnight_______” and we found the picture in the book. The bottle of stars was his favorite by far because it made a great noise when shaken. The balloon and toy phone were also favorites.
After awhile, Buddy decided it would be more fun to dump everything out of the basket and put it back in again. I’m in favor of anything that encourages picking up messes, so I was happy to let him change the structure of the activity.
Overall, I’m really happy with this storytelling basket activity. I thought it was a great way to extend reading with a little one, and I think it helped build his vocabulary as well. I definitely plan to do more storytelling baskets in the future.
