May 2nd, 2018
Over the second half of the spring term my school was lucky enough to have some visiting duck and caterpillar eggs which we watched hatch and grow into ducklings and butterflies.
This was a magical experience for the children and they thought they had seen it all until…
After many discussions about who had left them and what could be inside them, we were sent some ‘exclusive’ video footage that had been secretly recorded the night before. With a little bit of help from FXGURU our cloakroom came alive and a full-size T-Rex was walking around the eggs!
Folding? Folding paper to make books! Tales Toolkit provide online training on the importance of and how to create these books and the brilliance of this idea was also shown to me in a school workshop delivered by Paul Johnson, from The Book Art Project.
I handed out the books and had already printed some of the mini Tales Toolkit symbols on paper, then I just watched as one girl started cutting out the symbols and sticking them on different pages.
Tales Toolkit also offer these pages pre-made for convenience on their website. However, if like me you’re having a big drive on fine motor control, getting the children to cut and stick is just taking advantage of this little extra development opportunity.
Many of them then wandered off to independently record their stories – which was wonderful, until I found that most of the children know me too well… They realised I’d want to keep these books, so quickly hid their finished books in their bags so they could take them home, leaving me with very few samples!
Using Tales Toolkit with book making has been amazing, as the children are not only creating the stories, they are also writing books (with a little bit of help initially!).
It has provided them with a structure to their story for them to logistically follow. As a result of Tales Toolkit, they have been really able to take ownership of their stories and are very proud of their final books, which explains why they all (very cleverly!) hid them in their book bags to take them home!!