A few days ago we read the story of the Selfish Crocodile. If you are not familiar with this epic, it's about a rather mean crocodile who only discovers his softer side once an unlikely mouse helps him by removing a sore tooth. My boys enjoy the pictures and the story which has similarities with the tale of the Good Samaritan.
After reading the story, and because the boys were so into it, I decided to extend their learning with a little play dough activity.
First we coloured the play dough together with yellow and blue food colouring, discussing colour mixing and kneading the dough.
Then with some help from me the boys moulded their play dough into simple crocodile head shapes and we added eyes and teeth from some of the wooden pieces in our Spielgaben set.
We had fun putting the teeth in then extracting the bad one. We talked about how crocodiles re-grow their teeth throughout their lives.
Biscuit and I made the crocodile teeth from the wooden triangular shaped tablet pieces and Boris made his from the smallest white and black plastic sticks.
Boris even had a go at re-enacting the moment from the story by getting his toy mouse to pull the tooth lol!
I love using stories to spark imaginative play and development of learning. I am sure we will develop more project based activities using books as a starting point in the future.
