“The snow is falling. The field mice are sleeping, the bears are sleeping…” Ruth Krauss, The Happy Day
We have been under a pile of snow and cold here for weeks. There are many weeks of this ahead of us. It is no where near Spring. But that doesn’t stop us from wanting it already!
One of our favourite books here at Small Potatoes, is The Happy Day, by Ruth Krauss. It was published back in 1949, but has not lost its charm. The illustrations are simple…all black and white. The words are simple and repetitive, which means it lends itself nicely for reading aloud to children and having them join in.
When we have story time at my house, I usually let the smalls take the book first and have them read thru it on their own. One of the older ones usually becomes the “storyteller” and reads to the rest of them. I like to see how they interpret the story from the illustrations they see on the pages.
Their version is often very close to the written word…
Once the smalls have had their turn reading, I read the story to them. But, The Happy Day is not a story book that you just listen to. It’s a “get up and get into it” kind of story book…
When we have a favourite book, we don’t stop at just reading it and acting it out. We go all out. Today, we scrounged around in the resource room and toy shelves for things we could use to make a small world play bin inspired by The Happy Day.
We started with coarse salt from our Arctic Imagination Bowl. I find coarse salt is easier to clean up than fake snow, and it has a bit of sparkle, just like real snow. (The salt did not bother the little ones’ skin, if you’re concerned about that.) You could also use white rice or homemade cloud dough.
We added little trees from our Christmas village, “snowballs” and snowflakes from our Winter supply bucket. (These 2 items were originally purchased at the dollar store.) We added as many woodland creatures as we could find…which wasn’t many, but we had black bears! We added yellow silk flowers from our Spring supply bucket, and I let the smalls set it up how they’d like.
Now what was all the running and laughing about? *SPOILER ALERT…
Spring had come to the woods!
Today is the start of the Weekly Kid’s Co-op! It’s like a giant blog hop, with bloggers all over the world sharing their kid-friendly ideas and activities…oh happy day!! If you have an activity you’d like to share, link up by clicking the blue critter below and follow the simple steps. If not, feel free to click the view button and spend some time exploring the other blogs that have joined in…you won’t be disappointed!
Thanks for stopping by,
~Arlee, Small Potatoes
