Easy Version

Day One

Listen to the story 'Tiddler' again with your child.

 

Talk about how Julia Donaldson turned different creatures into characters in her story. Discuss how some are real and some are mythical. This is the wonderful thing about stories, they can be whatever we want them to be! Using the sea creature they found out about last week, ask your child to create a story character. Ask them to draw the character and tell you about it or write some sentences about it. Is it big or small? Is it friendly? Is it shy? How does it get about? Are there other characters in its family? Where does it live? etc. They will need to give it a name. In the story, Tiddler is named because of his size. They could name their character after its defining feature. 

 

Day Two

Explain to your child that they are going to be writing their own story for their character based on the plot of Tiddler. Talk about the characters in Tiddler. In their story, they will need a school teacher, friends for their character and perhaps some family members for their character. 

Make stick puppets for the characters and allow your child to play with them as they wish. Encourage them to make up reasons why their character is late for school. They could draw pictures of the setting to move their characters around in front of. 

Here is a video on making stick puppets. Pencils or pens work well instead of lollipop sticks. 

 

Day Three

Now ask your child to tell you about their character. What colour is he/she? What does he/she look like? What is his/her name? Ask your child to practise writing some of the words they have used to describe their character. Help them to find the sounds they need on a sound mat. 

 

Day Four and Five

Spend some time practising writing three letter words such as 'cat' and 'jam' using the activities below. We call these CVC words because they have a consonant at the beginning and end and a vowel in the middle.