We are making owl masks and owl babies today for this month’s book box!
Last month, my friend Beth from Days with Grey introduced me to a book box. I just love them! So, I joined in on the fun and made crafts to go along with the ones we have been doing.
A book box is simply a box with a book your introducing to your child along with some items/crafts/toys that will help your child retell the story to you (kind of like props that your child can pick up to help them remember the story). Keep the box in your child’s reach so he can practice whenever he’d like!
The last one we did was Mouse Count. The counting mouse rocks and snake tube really helped my son retell Mouse Count. He sits there and flips the pages of the book one at a time and slides the numbered mouse rocks through the snake tube when he sees the snake pick up a mouse in the book.
This month, we are doing Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson (Pictured below. Amazon afflilate link provided. It doesn’t raise the price for you. It just helps my family). It’s a great book to let children know that mommy comes back from whatever she’s doing. When my kiddos were babies, they’d cry whenever I drop them off at the babysitter. I could only imagine what they were thinking, “Mommy is leaving me forever!” So, this book really is a cute way of helping with separation anxiety.
Why a Book Box?
The idea here isn’t to master story retelling. It’s to help your child practice these skills and be familiar with them for kindergarten. In kindergarten, with prompting and support, they will be asked to:
- retell a familiar story,
- answer questions about it
- and identify characters, setting and events.
So, a book box containing a familiar book and fun crafts/items/toys will make learning this skill fun! Play while learning is so important. Play is what children do best and where they feel most comfortable to try new things. So, a book box makes learning to retell a story playful!
