Many Book Madness

We're not kidding. It's madness!

ADDED August 03, 2009

Length:  Thirty minutes, more or less.

Parental Involvement:  Explain the activity.  Participate if you want!  (But kids can do it without you, too.)  

Kids Should Be Able to:  Basic reading is great, but not necessary.  Kids should be able to look at pictures and create simple stories.

 

If you've been visiting our blog even occasionally, you probably know some of our favorite things:

(1)  Books and reading
(2)  Creativity and imagination
(3)  Fun

and finally:

(4)  Madness!

(By madness, I mean joyful, energetic craziness.  And in case I'm not doing a good job expressing myself, it's supposed to be a good thing.)

Today's activity is meant to get kids reading.  It's also supposed to rev up their imaginations and their creative instincts!  (Oh, and it's quite simple, too.)

Have your child go to the bookshelf and choose five random books -- or seven, or nine.  (For some reason, I think an odd number of books works better for this activity.)

Your kid should spread the books out on a bed, table, or the floor.  Then have your little one open each book to any random page.  Next, you guys should read each opened random page out loud.

Do the pages make any sense whatsoever when you guys read them back to back?  Probably not a lot of sense, but maybe a little.

You don't have to work too hard to make sense of the random pages.  Either you'll see a connection or you won't.  Even better, maybe the budding bright minds will spot a connection or story that you missed!  (Parents have enough work during the day as it is.  Let the kids figure out the story!)

Here is an example many-book story session for you.  We randomly flipped to these pages...

From these pages, my kids decided the story was this:  Some kids were bored.  They looked out their front window and saw some bears walking down the street.  The bears were wearing hats: a  blue one, a green one, and a red one.  (And oops, one of the bears tripped and fell.)  Then, the bears got into cars and swerved, curved and had a huge race car accident.  The kids watched all this from their window and were not bored any more!

Now, is that an amazingly wonderful story?  Will Steven Spielberg want to make a movie out of it?  Well, probably not.  But it was "something new" that my kids created.  And it was fun!

When you guys have figured out the story and discussed it to everyone's satisfaction, have your kid put the books back and get another five.  (The cleaning up is very important, obviously.  Parents have enough work during the day as it is!  Have the kids keep tabs on the mess, please!)

Have fun with the reading madness!  If you guys create anything super spectacular and entertaining, please let us know.  (We'd make up our own stories, but we have enough work during the day during it is!)

reading activity,

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