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HOLIDAY STORY SKILLS
 

ORNAMENT STORIES
Put several figure ornaments in a bag and sit with your children.
Reach into the bag, take out an ornament and start telling a story incorporating the item the ornament represents.
Next let the child next to you take out an ornament and include it also into your story.
Continue with letting your children take turns drawing out ornaments while you weave each item into your story.
Variation:  After doing this activity a couple of times, try letting the child who chooses an ornament be the one to incorporate it into the story.

 
CARD STORIES
You will need some old holiday greeting cards for this activity.
Take the cards and cut off the front picture.
Sit in a circle with your children.
Place the card pictures in the middle of the circle.
Let your children take turns choosing a card and tell the rest of the group what is happening in the picture.
Variation:  You can also do this activity based on a story character, such as The Adventurous Mouse.  (This could be a pretend character or one your children have read about in a book, or a class pet.)  As each child chooses a card, he must tell about an adventure that the character had in this surrounding.


HOLIDAY STORIES
As you read holiday or seasonal stories to your children this time of year, remember to incorporate some of the following learning opportunities.
            RECALL – Ask your children the following day about a story that you read to them the day before.  What happened in the story? Etc.
            PREDICTING – As you read a story, stop once in a while and ask your children what they think will happen next.  Later discuss if they were correct or not.
            ENDING CHANGES – After reading a story, ask your children if they could think of different ways the story could have ended.
             
HOLIDAY COUPON BOOKS
With a pen, divide a piece of typing paper into six sections.
Design a chore coupon with pictures and words in each section.  Example:  “Feed the Pet”  “Pick Up Toys” “Water the Plants”  “Dust the Furniture”  “Wash the Car”, etc.
Make copies of this sheet and cut out piles of the coupons.
Let your children, select which coupons they want in their books.
Then help them staple their coupons together.
Encourage your children to read their coupon books to you and to their parents when they take them home.
Have children give their coupon books to their parents as a holiday gift.
 
COMPOUND WORD STORIES
You will need a pile of cards with pictures of objects on them. 
You could cut pictures from cards or magazines and glue them onto small index cards.
Mix up the cards and have your children take turns drawing two cards.
Example:  A child could draw a card with the picture of a dog and one of a car.
Now the child must put the two words together to make a new word, such as cardog, or dogcar.
The child tells the rest of the group, the new word he has created and he tells the rest of the group what exactly this new thing is.  Example:  A dogcar, is a car that looks like a dog; or a dogcar is a car that a dog can drive, or a dogcar is a car that carries dogs.
Let each child have a turn drawing two cards and inventing a new item.