Beyond the Book: "Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchins

When S asked to do a story stretcher with a book about a farm, I had a few in mind. Over and over again, I kept going back to the classic tale by Pat Hutchins, Rosie's Walk. Rosie the hen leaves her chicken coop for a little stroll. As she moves about the book through pages of bold illustrations, she is blissfully ignorant of a very determined fox following closely behind her. This book is great all on its own or as part of a farm theme. My favorite aspect of using this book with children is that it can truly get them moving. Reading need not be a sedentary activity--and while you're at it, you'll be teaching and learning some great prepositional and directional language!

A story walk is a great way to take the text right off the page of this book and take your little readers into the world of story drama! S talked last week about wanting to make a bird costume and since Rosie the Hen is the protagonist in this book, I knew he'd get a kick out of making a hen hat to wear. We already had a fox hat from when S was a baby. It is definitely more Y's size at this point and I foresaw that S might feel jealous so getting to make his own hen hat was a definite bonus. Costumes are a great addition to story stretcher activities. They can really bring the story alive and engage your young readers. Alternatively you can use toys/props or make your own puppets. I combined text written on sentence strips and laminated pictures from the book that I printed and laminated from this great website to set up a story walk along our living room floor. When S woke up and came downstairs from his nap, he immediately saw our story map lining the hardwood floor and was excited to add the finishing touches to his hen hat.

We created our hen hat by stapling together a couple of strips of white cardboard. I covered the front with clear contact paper, sticky side out, but stapled a second layer of cardboard to the inside of the hat so it wouldn't stick to anyone's hair! In advance I drew on eyes and attached the beak and waddle--older artists can help with this and even younger ones if you have a bit more time on your hands!

S made a great Rosie and was definitely ready for a walk. Y was a great, albeit sleepy little fox...

Our story walk took us from one end of our living room to the other, with all roads leading to home in our kitchen set, where Rosie arrives safely in time for dinner. The printed and laminated pictures are a great addition to a movable story map like this or can be used with velcro as a flannel board set, made into stick puppets or glued onto a paper collage story map. If you want to take it outdoors, you could even set this activity up outside using sidewalk chalk and/or props. It's unbearably hot here right now, so story stretchers are a great way to entertain us indoors for a bit!

I included a basket of some supplemental
 farm themed reading 

I especially love how story stretcher activities inspire and encourage dramatic play. We happen to have some great farm themed toys and books as well as a felt board set I found at a secondhand store a while ago. Including music and movement to children's book extension activities is also a great way to get moving while building vocabulary, rhyme awareness and other early literacy skills. S and Y both love a song we frequently hear at our local library's story times, "Knock Knock Knock" by Michele Valeri from her album "Little Ditties for Itty Bitties."

 That flannel board set made a great addition to listening to and singing that song. We added each of the animals to the board as they "knocked" on the door and then continued the song on our own with other farm animals. Thrift stores can be a great resource for play and learning materials like flannel board sets. And you can also make your own set by printing and laminating pictures and adding velcro to the backside. Flannel boards are such a fabulous supplement to reading children's literature and greatly appeal to visual and tactile learners. They can also be used by children to retell and invent their own stories and nursery rhymes.

Arts and crafts are another favorite story stretcher activity here. I had set up a couple of simple farm themed activities for S. 

Our marble roll "pig in the mud" (brown paint) was a lot of fun!

S loved sticking cotton balls onto this contact paper sheep. I showed him how
 they can be stuck on whole or pulled apart like sheep's wool.

S especially likes the part where we hang up his finished artwork!

S really wanted to use his scissors today, so on the fly I set up a cutting practice activity to find some hidden farm animals hiding in the "grass:" 

I drew a simple barn on white paper, sneaked a few farm animal stickers at the bottom of the page and stapled on some construction paper grass to the bottom as well. S got busy cutting the grass with his scissors to reveal the hidden farm animals and then colored the barn and some rain in the sky!

I often conclude our story stretchers with a related sensory bin--another great way to encourage dramatic play and theme expansion. I set up this bin with popping corn kernels. For those who prefer not to use food in sensory play, you can sub in your favorite non-food fillers. Shredded brown bags would look great or even hay. Alternatively, you could always use the popping corn for its intended purpose when you're done playing. I store and reserve this for repeated use in our sensory bins as well as craft projects.
For some further reading, I printed out a very simple emergent reader about farm animals from this website. I am not a huge fan of using emergent readers in the traditional sense, however S (like many kids) loves the feeling of reading to me all by himself. Simple books like this and building sight word recognition are one component of early literacy. Some early readers really catch on to sight words and learn well in this way. Others do better with sounding out words and phonemic awareness. There are many right ways to learn how to read, but fostering a lifelong love of literature is the most important goal for me both as a parent and an educator. S enjoyed reading this booklet to me and to Y repeatedly and coloring in the animals. I demonstrate to him the first time how to track his finger underneath the words. Even if he is not yet recognizing words, he is learning that text on a page is where the story comes from! It can be helpful if using printable emergent readers like this one to have a copy for yourself and each of your emerging readers and to sit facing the same direction.

S is excited and eager to be choosing the themes and/or titles for our story stretchers lately and all of these factors are nurturing his own love of literature. We will be back with another story stretcher activity next week. Until then, happy playing!