Read Along - The Gruffalo / Easy Felt Board How To

When I heard that Polly at Helping Little Hands was organizing a March Read Along, I knew I had to join in. Loo is a book lover. I remember being nervous about having kids babies just 19 months apart. Then Beri was born and all Loo wanted to do was read. If I was busy with Beri, no problem I'd just ask him to get a book from his room and we'd read while I nursed or held the baby.

We spend a lot of time around this book shelf. Beri may be just 9 months old but she's already an avid "reader".

I decided to feature The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson and Alex Sheffler. It's been a favourite in our house since we bought it when Loo was 6 months old. He can pretty much recite it but then again he can pretty much recite all his books.

It was hard to decide what to do for an activity but I finally narrowed it down to two activities. The main activity was a Gruffalo felt play board.

Here's some quick instructions to make your own.

Materials: 2-3 sheets of felt, 8x10 picture frame, printout of characters ( I googled "The Gruffalo" you could easily do this with any book or theme), glue, foam sheets or card stock

1. Print out characters and glue to card stock or foam sheet.
2. Cut out each character ( cutting through paper and card stock or foam) and glue these to one of the sheets of felt. I ended up using spray adhesive to get it to stick but I'm sure any good glue would work.
3. Once the glue is dried cut out each of your pieces.
4. Take your 8x10 frame and remove the backing and glass. Set the glass aside, you could recycle it or find some other (safe) project to use it for.
5. Place your "background" on the back of the picture frame (glue if necessary) and place it back in your frame. My frame worked well without having to glue the felt down, I like this because I can change it or turn it back into a frame at some point.

You're done. Time to play!

I had originally thought about doing something similar with magnets but the thought of little magnets in a house full of little hands and mouths made me too nervous.

The plan was to keep Beri away from this activity but she already got her hands on it when Loo was down for his nap.

I made the felt board for Loo since he's two but I can imagine this would be a fun activity from start to finish for older children. A variation would be to use colouring sheets or children's drawings as a source for

images.

Last week was our more delicious activity. We had friends visiting for a few days so instead of having Apple Crisp we had Gruffalo Crumble*. To transform our crisp into Gruffalo Crumble I headed to the bulk food store and 22 cents later had the "purple prickles" to top our dessert with. It was a big hit. I used this recipe. How could it not be good, butter, brown sugar, white sugar, apples, oats, cinnamon and purple sprinkles!

Thanks again to Polly for organizing the Read Along. I've really been enjoying all the books and activities. To see everyone elses favorite books head on over.

 

* In the book, the mouse meets up with other animals who want to eat him, he deters them by telling them he's meeting a Gruffalo who has purple prickles on his back. At the end of the book when the mouse does meet the Gruffalo he scares him away by convincing the Gruffalo that the mouse's favourite food is Gruffalo Crumble

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Did you know? The Gruffalo was written in 1999 and was recently turned into a short film. It was nominated for Best Animated Short Film Oscar at the Academy Awards this past February. We were rooting for it but it didn't win.