For today’s Time to Read Tuesday, I made a storytelling basket to go along with the book Little Blue Truck. Buddy really enjoyed the last storytelling basket I made, and since then, he’s chosen to read that book (Goodnight Moon) more often than usual.
Little Blue Truck is a story that involves a little blue truck, a dump truck, and a bunch of farm animals. I had a dump truck and farm animals already, but I didn’t have anything for the main character, Little Blue Truck. Since I didn’t want to buy a new truck toy, I just printed off a picture of Little Blue Truck from the book’s online resources. I laminated it to make it stronger, and then I taped it to a wooden block.
I read through Little Blue Truck once with Buddy before I gave him the basket. After we read the story, I gave Buddy the storytelling basket. As he pulled out each object, we talked about what that object was. I also found the part of the book where that character first appears and showed Buddy the picture. Once he had pulled out everything, we reread the book and acted it out with the figures.
Our dump truck was much nicer than the one in the book because he gave rides to Little Blue and many of the other animals. (Or maybe Buddy was just trying to show what might have happened after the story ends?) Either way, he enjoyed playing with the figures for a long time, and he did go back from time to time to look at the pictures in the book again.
I will be curious to see if this activity will make Buddy more interested in this book in the future. (That was definitely the case with the Goodnight Moon book after that storytelling basket.) In the meantime, I will have to think about what book would be good for our next activity. Please share any ideas you have. I’d love to hear them!
I LOVE this story as do my granddaughters! Where did you find the animals for your basket?
The animals are actually bath toys, but we’ve never used them in the bath. (They’re just too much fun to save only for bath time.) They’re from Munchkin. Here’s a link to them on Amazon. Munchkin Animal Bath Toys
Thanks for reading!
A great book for your next basket is Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle!
Great idea! Buddy loves that book, but we don’t own it. (We do own Polar Bear, Polar Bear, what do you hear though.) Either book would lend itself well to a story basket!
Love this story telling basket idea. I like the size of the little dump truck. Where could I find one like it. Thank you.
I found that one at Target (I think) in the dollar section.