This particular activity had us watching a variety of different clips on You Tube based around the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle while following along with a hard copy of the book.
My daughter loves watching little videos on my computer so this is a fun way to get her viewing and experiencing text and books in a different format.
Seeing a favourite book via a new medium can help give children a new understanding of the story and help build their comprehension
Keeping up with the story while it was being told. She loved that this version used different (real life) pictures to the original book. Looking and recognising are important early literacy skills.
Helping develop early literacy skills by following the story and reinforcing skills like book handling and page turning
Some tips:
- Creating a literacy rich environment will help your child further their understandings and develop a love of books
- The more positive a child's engagement with books is, the more they will want to interact with them and the easier it will be for them to learn how to formally read when the time is right.
- Pushing children to decode text at too early an age can make them associate reading with failure. Simply put, make books fun and it will happen when they're ready.
- Spend this time talking with your child about the different ways that books can be represented and aid them in following the story and choosing appropriate clips for them to watch.
- If none of your books at home have versions on You Tube, keep yourself a little list of titles you see online and borrow some of them next time you're at the library.
- Ask your child questions about what is happening in the story or how it could relate to real life to help build their comprehension, ie. Why do you think the caterpillar had a stomach ache? Have you ever had a stomach ache? etc
- There are so many other cool things on You Tube that you can use with children. Singing, dancing, nursery rhymes etc...
Debs :)
