We are quite excited to learn more about Julia Donaldson, March’s Virtual Book Club for Kids author. We own and love her book The Gruffalo
and came up with a fun kids activity to go with it…homemade Gruffalo puppets!
In The Gruffalo, a little mouse uses his wit to outsmart the many animals in the forest who are trying to eat him. My kids love rooting for the underdog while listening to the lyrical writing. Even my oldest, who can easily read it herself, enjoys hearing it read by her father or me. Donaldson has also written wonderfully descriptive text that the mouse uses to describe the Gruffalo. These vivid descriptions became the instructions for our book project.
The kids raided the craft closet for puppet making supplies and came up with brown paper bags, scrap paper, glue, scissors, markers and googly eyes. They reread parts of the description they couldn’t remember and used the illustrations to guide them.
Here are their Gruffalos! They were perfect to use to retell the story.
After they used the story descriptions to make Gruffalo puppets they decided to make friends for their Gruffalos. They used their puppets to create sequels to the story and acted out what they thought would happen if the Gruffalo had friends, or in my daughter’s case what would happen if the Gruffalo had a girlfriend.
While making their puppets the big kids were busy learning about:
- Story structure
- Reading comprehension strategies
- Characterization
- Descriptive writing
- Adjectives
- Authors and illustrators
…and more!
All while creating with some of their favorite art supplies and using their imaginations. Book extension activities are a great way to develop reading and pre-reading skills. I can’t wait to check out the rest of the Julia Donaldson book posts that are linked up to the Virtual Book Club for Kids this month, there are going to be so many fun new books to discover!
What fun activities have you done with Julia Donaldson books? Please add your posts to the blog hop linky below. There are a few rules for this blog hop that we ask you to follow, so make sure to read them:
- Link up only posts inspired by Julia Donaldson that share children’s book inspired crafts, activities, recipes, etc. Any other posts will be deleted.
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Oooh, those are great! Will have to try those, too!
Thanks Jane!!!
i love these puppets, and how you used them to sneak in all that learning. Super cute!
Thanks Carolyn! We really loved the story!
Those are so cute! We’re going to have to make some.
They are so easy! My 3 year old’s cracks me up, she didn’t think they should have said the Gruffalo had orange eyes so she decided to change them to green. Oh to be 3 again!
I like a girl who knows what she wants. I’ve got one of those too. 🙂
Ha!
I love that they made friends to go along with the Gruffalos!
Me too!
I love puppets of all kind, but the ones that go along with books are the best, of course! Thanks for sharing at The Children’s Bookshelf, Megan!
My kids love to make character puppets! And I adore that they love to act out and rewrite their favorite stories!