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Story School
Story School - Week 6
Welcome to the sixth week of Story School!
We're so glad you and your child are here to join us for Story School. If you haven't had the chance, be sure to introduce yourself and your child on our Family Learning Space.
Each week, we will focus our learning around specific early literacy and language skills as well as social emotional skills that prepare your child to thrive in school and beyond. We'll have a big message and big question to discuss together. Reflect on the message and question, and then follow the steps below throughout the week.
Our message this week is: With stories, we grow. Books are an amazing tool to learn about the world and about our own lives. As you and your child have conversations about the books and stories you share together, they begin to develop comprehension skills, their ability to understand and interpret stories. Our question is: How do stories connect us?
Our message this week
With stories,
we grow.
Our question this week
How do stories
connect us?
Step 1: Watch the Story Lesson
Step 2: Join our Live Learning Group
Check your email for the exact time and date, as well as a link, for your group's online Story Hour.
Step 3: Homework on the
Make Way for Books App
This week, we’re learning how stories help us learn, grow, and connect with one another. Your assignment this week is also about growing— your homework is to plant a bean and watch it grow!
Continue learning with the Make Way for Books App. Here are our suggestions for the week. Don’t forget to follow your child’s interests and explore, mix and match, and most of all, have fun learning!
If you don't have the app yet, you can download it now!
Read Now on the app!
Plant a bean
Do
Plant a bean in a sandwich bag! Check out the video above on how to do it. You can also follow these instructions.
Materials: Paper towel, beans or seeds, sandwich bag, spray bottle with water
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Grab one paper towel and fold it in half.
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Using a spray bottle, dampen the paper towel making sure it's not dripping.
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Spread the beans evenly inside the fold of the paper towel.
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Put the paper towel inside the sandwich bag, ensuring the seeds don't fall out.
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Close the sandwich bag, leaving a small gap open at the end.
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Place you bag on top of the refrigerator or tape it to a window. Watch your seed grow!
What your child is learning
Children are natural scientists who are curious about the world around them. Encourage your child's curiosity and understanding of cause and effect by asking questions and talking about changes they see as their seeds begin to grow day by day. This is an excellent opportunity to build your child's vocabulary by using special words you may not use in everyday conversations, such as seed, root, sprout, germination, and more.
Gumdrop bridge
Do
Build a bridge together out of gumdrops and toothpicks.
Make a pile of gumdrops (you can also use play dough, marshmallows, cheese cubes, Styrofoam, etc) and of toothpicks. Have your child stick a toothpick in a gumdrop then attach another gumdrop to the other end of the toothpick. Your child can keep attaching gumdrops to the toothpicks and see how she can connect them together!
To start off, have her build 2 triangles then see how she can connect them together. Tell her that as she is doing this, she is building a truss! If your child needs some inspiration, show her pictures of truss bridges. The trusses are built in the shape of triangles because of the way it helps hold and distribute weight loads.
This is an activity meant for your child to tinker around and to let her discover scientific concepts through experimentation, so if something she builds doesn't work, say, "Hmm, let's investigate why this didn't work here. What do you think happened? How can we fix it?" This thinking will unleash her inner scientist!
This bridge is meant to be a good challenge for your child, but sometimes the hardest part of this activity is not eating the gumdrops!
What your child is learning
This activity incorporates creativity, scientific thinking, and fine motor skill development! Letting your child be free to design something that is meant to be used purposefully to help people with a problem (such as crossing a body of water to another piece of land without a boat) is the basis of engineering.
Creative and "outside the box" thinking are what help get the job done! Encouraging answers to questions such as why something happened (or is happening), why something didn't work and how to make it better is fundamental scientific thinking. It allows your child to view challenges in a more critical way. Encouraging these thinking perspectives as early as possible in her life will help her view many of life's challenges with a different lens.
Toothpicks are very thin and small, so it takes quite a bit of hand dexterity to hold and manipulate them enough to attach them to a gumdrop! Doing this helps develop the muscles in their hands (fine motor muscles) that are used for writing, cutting, typing, etc.
Hide and Seek
Do
Play a little different version of hide and seek with your child.
Hide one of your child’s toys (like a stuffed bunny or other animal). Offer clues to your child if they are struggling to find it. Use as many descriptive words as you can in the clue: “Your bunny is hiding underneath something soft and rectangular that we sit on.”
Your goal is for your child to find the toy. You can let them hide it and give you clues to guide your search, too!
What your child is learning
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With help, to manage actions and behavior
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To vary amount of information shared
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To help, to make simple predictions
Mud pies
Do
Let your child play in the mud. It's messy, but a great way for your child to learn!
Materials: Dirt, water, pots and pans, spoons, ladles, scoops, plastic or tin containers, apron
Make some mud with your child and let them make some pies with some basic kitchen materials. As they are playing, ask them open-ended questions.
Open-ended questions are ones that do not have a definitive answer such as "yes," no," red," "12" etc or an answer that is right or wrong. Some great examples of these are "What will happen if we add more water to this?" "What are you making?" or "Is there anything else we can add to this mud pie?"
What your child is learning
As you're talking with your child, you are building their vocabulary and helping them learn. Open-ended questions are great for spurring on your child's thinking process. You can also learn a lot about them just by observing what they are doing and repeating what they are saying while they are playing. Play is an essential part of learning!
Step 4: Keep track of your child's learning
As you complete each activity or read a book together, your child is learning and gaining important early reading skills! Be sure to mark each activity and book "done" to add them to your child's learning journal in the app and keep track of their growth!
First, make sure to add a child in the app's settings page. When you mark a book or activity done, you will see a screen the one on the left that will give you the option to add it to your child's learning journal. Add a note, new vocabulary words, and a picture!
Step 5: Reflect and connect with families
What did you learn this week?
Join us on our Family Learning Space to post your pictures and videos and to connect with other Story School parents and caregivers.
We want to hear from you! Use the our Family Learning Space to share your thoughts, talk about your experiences, and ask questions!