If You Give a…..: Poppins Book Nook School

I have to admit as I was brainstorming this at first I was not coming up with anything.  I couldn’t think of any great ideas, and then I remembered:

I love the “If you give a….” series, and back when I was teaching, I loved to talk with the kids about the style of book, and how it works.  This time I gathered up all my copies of the different books in the series (which was amazingly a lot of books).  Then we read through them all.

I actually don’t have pictures of my kids working on this because I designed it to be completely independent work to do while I’m at Bible study and they are in child care, so I’ll show you pictures of Superman’s work.  The appeal of this loose plan to me, a parent with early writers and readers can let their younger kids just draw pictures, and their older kids can write.

Here’s Superman’s version of the project:

First he went through and wrote out what happened in the chosen story he wanted, he chose If You Give a Pig a Party, and got the highlights of the steps in the circle.

Next they chose an animal and they were supposed to think of words that started with the same letter.  You can see not all of Superman’s words do start with the same letter, and that’s okay.  The goal was to get him thinking.

Next he took the story board sheet and planned sequence of events for his story.  He gave me a very long explanation, but I’m guessing his dog drove a car, rode a skate board, and had a lot of fun.

The final step was to brainstorm words to use in your story.  Superman went through and chose some words that looked promising from the story he read, which wasn’t my intent, but it’s a good way for early writers to get some confidence and move forward in their writing, so I’m not going to complain at all.

This process gets your kids closer and closer to having a rough draft without it being a scary process.  They all really enjoyed coming up with story ideas, and gave me some great stories.

If you’d like to get the printable I made, click on the link:

I’m joining with several other great bloggers to share our takes on a different theme each month, check out how the other bloggers approached this theme and then create your own version:Enchanted Homeschooling Mom – 3 Dinosaurs – Monsters Ed – Chestnut Grove Academy – Growing in God’s Grace – Royal Little Lambs – Life with Moore Babies – Teach Beside Me – The Usual Mayhem – Mum Central – Fantastic Fun and Learning – Kathys Cluttered Mind – Toddler Approved – Growing Book by Book – Adventures in Mommydom – B-Inspired Mama –  Edventures with Kids – Learning & Growing the Piwi way – A Gluten Free Journey – Preschool Powol Packets – To The Moon and Back – Our Craft ~N~ Things  – Fresh Farm Adventures  – Are We There Yet? – Afterschool for Smarty Pants