Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon is a book that even very young children can easily relate to - a little bunny in his great green room saying goodnight to all the things around him. It is a classic bedtime book, with simple, soothing rhyme and rhythm.
The illustrations are in my opinion quite noteworthy. When the writer wants to focus on the room, bright colours are used and when focusing on details, such as the picture of the cow jumping over the moon, the illustrations are in black and white. Furthermore, as the story progresses, you will (or might) notice the green room darkening slowly. The time shown on the clock changes too as you turn the page and the quirky little mouse changes its position - Alicia loves to spot the mouse! :P The bunny changes his position in bed, the kittens take the place of the old lady on the rocking chair...
Here are a couple of activities we did after reading the book:
(i) finding all the items mentioned in the book in the house (as far as possible)
Here's Alicia with her mittens!
You can see that she's really very pleased with the activity :P
A snapshot of but a few things we gathered - we had plenty more! :)
Getting the child to find physical objects or related objects to those mentioned in the book is a simple activity that the tot will gladly participate in. It allows the learner to be active in making the connections with what she sees on the page and what she has in her surroundings, not to mention that it's great for kinaesthetic learners!
After gathering all the items, read the story to the child again and when the item is mentioned, get the child to pick it out from the stash you probably have on the floor. :)
(ii) This is an activity that I found from
here.
I decided to save printer ink and drew the pictures myself, together with Alicia. I realise that she finds it more engaging to watch and guess what mummy is drawing next. So what I did was to draw the pictures on a piece of paper (bearing in mind the size of the pocket chart), paste it on a cereal box then cut out the individual cards - and they're done! :)
I bought a pocket chart from Daiso last year and it's come in handy for this activity. :)
This activity is more for teaching word recognition - which will take a while and lots of revision! :)
(Alicia has already recognised the word "Goodnight" due to the frequent appearance of the word)
You can remove either the picture or the word (leave "Goodnight" alone) and get your preschooler to fill in the blank with the right card.
Do not attempt to do too many words at a time. (I have a total of 15 words, focus on maybe 3-4 at a time)
(iii) Revise the rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle" - that's where the cow jumped over the moon! :)
Other activities you can consider:
- Hiding a favourite toy or a toy mouse and getting the child to look for it (similar to spotting the mouse in the book)
- Incorporating the "Goodnight ___" phrase to your kid's bedtime routine.
- Add a twist to the phrase: say "Good Morning ____" instead when your child wakes - if you aren't in a rush!
That's what we did for Goodnight Moon! Stay tuned for activities for Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle! :)
