Puppets For Moppets

 

            A skill a child really needs for writing is concentration. That's because the better a child can think, the better the child can write. It takes practice to listen and absorb what you hear. It may not seem like work, but any way that you can help your small child learn to listen, you're laying the groundwork for a future as a capable writer.

 

            So here's a fun way to help your child listen, with an immediate payoff: find hand puppets that are characters in a story that you can read aloud while your child acts out the story.

 

            Examples: a frog and a toad for the Frog and Toad series; a mouse puppet with various props for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, or a monkey puppet for the Curious George series.

 

            As your small child listens to you read the story, he or she is processing the vocabulary and matching the meaning of it to actions that will portray the story line. That takes a lot of brain work, organization and planning. Feel free to pause in between sentences or sections to give your child time to react, and center stage.

 

            Later, when your child can read, it might be fun for him or her to be the narrator, and you do the acting. It's always fun to . . . change roles!

 

By Susan Darst Williams • www.GoBigEd.com • Grammar Granny 006 • © 2006