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Our Core Books

At Mad Hatters we love reading stories and understand the importance of reading stories at an early age. Reading stories supports children's learning in all areas, especially their emergent literacy skills and develops a foundation for a love of reading into their later years. At Mad Hatters we have loads of fantastic stories which we love to read with the children, however, as a nursery we have 10 core stories we feel allow us to dive into and really bring to life throughout the year. This allows children to remember key parts of the story, to use repeated refrains, answer questions, and act out in their own play. We developed our core stories with the help of "Centre for Literacy in Primary" and their suggestions for Core books, and knowing the books our children enjoy. Please find our "Core Books" below with some activity suggestions

The Gingerbread Man

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The Gingerbread man is a classic story about a gingerbread man escaping from different characters who want to eat him, until his meets a cunning fox when needing to cross the river. This story is fantastic for repeated refrains "run run as fast as you can" and lots of opportunities to explore different activities, from baking gingerbread biscuits to alternate endings to the story.

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Activity Ideas:

  • Making Gingerbread Biscuits (Please see link below for a recipe from Twinkl, or ask the management team for one)

  • Making Gingerbread people with playdough, and the other Characters

  • Exploring what happens if the Gingerbread man gets wet trying to cross the river

  • Trying different foods with ginger in

  • Growing Ginger

  • Colouring Pictures of Gingerbread men (Please see link below for a colouring page from Twinkl, or ask the management team for one)

  • Playing chase in the garden

  • Build a bridge out of different resources (maybe a lego bridge, or one out of blocks).

  • Making a raft for the gingerbread man to cross the river. Why not test these out - do they float on the water?

  • Make masks of different Characters and act out the story.

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Ruby's Sword

Ruby's Sword is about a little girl who finds a stick and creates her own adventures while chasing after her brothers. Her stick becomes a sword to battle the fearsome dragon, a spear to create a "royal feast", and a bridge to help her "loyal subjects". With other exciting adventures with her sword she finally builds a "magnificent" castle with the help of her brothers. 

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Activity Ideas:

  • Creating a den out of sticks and rocks - decorate it with things around the garden

  • Cloud watching - why not use the template below

  • Making Kites  carrier bags and strings are a super easy kite idea, however, please ensure supervision at all times.

  • Using a stick to make marks in the sand/mud/messy play.

  • Pooh races (who's stick will come out from under the bridge first and win the race!)

  • Creating a treasure wand - tie a piece of string onto a stick and go searching for treasure around a walk to the park

  • Make rain shakers (do they "drum" or do they make a different sound)

  • Prepare a "royal feast" for a picnic in the garden. Allow the children to chop their own fruit to go in their snack bowl.

  • Create a bug hotel for "loyal subjects" or a bridge to help cross puddles.

  • Create a cloud jar

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Walking through the jungle

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Go on an adventure through the jungle. Along the way meet different animals looking for their tea...

Activity Ideas:

  • Make different animals masks

  • Move in different ways. can you slither like a snake, hop like a frog, or stomp like an elephant?

  • Jungle Playdough - Add some leaves, sticks and animals...

  • What animal has what foot prints? Stomp animals through the paint as they go through a jungle

  • Sing the story as a song and act out the animals

  • Why not go on a trip to the Zoo?

  • Hide animals in the garden, make binoculars and go on a animal hunt around the garden.

  • Use crepe paper streamers to create a jungle obstacle course to go through the jungle....

  • Make some animal shaped shortbread biscuits

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Handa's Surprise

Handa wants to take her friend Akeyo some fruit. As Handa ponders on her journey which fruit she will like best, she is unaware the animals are taking the fruit out of her basket. I wonder which fruit is Akeyo's favourite...

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Activity Ideas:​

  • Making baskets

  • Can you balance a basket on your head?

  • Create a tuff tray with the landscape and animals to recreate the story

  • Orange scented playdough to create different fruits for the basket

  • Play hide and seek

  • What is your friends favourite fruit?

  • Write a shopping list of the fruits, and buy them from the shop. Allow the children to pick them and then take them home for fruit tasting. Which one do you like best?

  • Make a map to Akeyo's village. Can you place all the animals on the map to show Handa where the are?

  • Look at the world globe to find out where Savanna is.

  • Provide a variety of music from Kenya, and neighbouring countries, and create different dance moves. 

  • Explore the concept of what happens when we take one away? Can we record out findings?

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Monkey Puzzle

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Monkey has lost his mum, however, a butterfly offers to help find her. Along the way they meet lots of animals who are not monkey's mum. Butterfly doesn't realize they look like each other as her babies do not look like her. 

Activity Ideas:

  • Make pictures of mummy/carer (what colour eyes do you have? Are you tall? What colour hair do you have?

  • Use a mirror and talk about the similarities. Do you have the same colour eyes? Same colour hair?

  • Use the mirror to make a self portrait. 

  • Look at family photos through the generations. Are there any similarities?

  • Create a family tree.

  • Why not visit the butterfly farm - At nursery we will have the opportunity to watch caterpillars grow into butterflies before releasing them into the garden.

  • Make pictures of a butterfly - why not try using half the paper and folding it together to create symmetry.

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The Train Ride

Climb aboard for a rhythmic train ride through the country. There's lots to see and someone very special waiting at the end!

A little girl and her mother board the train in town and set off on a journey through the countryside. As they travel, the girl looks out of the window, asking "What shall I see? What shall I see?" And what does she see? Sheep, cows, horses and much more

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Activity Ideas:

  • Take a trip on a train to somewhere exciting or watch the trains come in and out of the station

  • Take a trip to a transport museum or a train museum (Statfold Museum is recommended by us)

  • Create a train track and make up your own adventures - using pillows as seats, lining up chairs, or using large cardboard boxes are a great way to create a train.

  • Make some train tickets to lots of different destinations - would you like to be a conductor for the day?

  • A trip to the farm to see lots of different animals

  • Make some pictures of different adventures/transport vehicles, family members

  • Use pictures from the book to talk about prepositions, such as, under, over, on top etc

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We're Going on a Bear Hunt

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Follow a father and his family as they go out in search of a bear. They wade through the grass, splash through the river, squelch through the mud and even negotiate a snowstorm on their way. But what will await them in the cave on the other side of the dark forest?

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Michael Rosen's repetitive text has a musical charm that lends itself perfectly to reading aloud, whether to a group or to an individual - and children will enjoy joining in with actions and words. Combined with Helen Oxenbury's beautiful illustrations, it makes for a wonderfully entertaining picture book that has become a firm favourite for families

Activity Ideas:

  • Go on a bear hunt around the garden/house

  • Take a trip to your local natural areas, what things can you find? what noises do they makes? why not take a picnic

  • Make a bear mask

  • Make some bear pictures

  • Create some messy play which makes the sounds within the story, allowing children to understand what "squelch squirch" sounds like. Try using a large tub with mud and water to walk through and create the sounds.

  •   Build a "cave" using bed sheets and pillows etc. Add a torch within your cave to be able to read "we're going on a bear hunt"

  • Go on a "sound walk" around the local area. Pick up on all the different sounds you can hear while you walk around. How many did you find?

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This is Our House

George has a house made from a big cardboard box and he says that no one else in the playground can come in--not Lindy, because she's a girl; not Freddie, because he's too small; not Sophie, because she wears glasses. But when George leaves his house for a moment, everyone piles in and, upon his return, George receives a taste of his own medicine! 

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Activity Ideas:

  • Junk Modelling - Collect some cardboard boxes and get creative

  • Create Self Portraits and discuss the features that make us unique

  • Create a picture of your house, what features does you house have?

  • Take a walk around the local area and point out some of the different features of different houses.

  • Use constructions toys, such as, lego, wooden blocks etc to create different houses. 

  • Plan a play date with your child's friends and have lots of fun building and playing together

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Brown Bear

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Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at me. Red bird, red bird, what do you see? I see a yellow duck looking at me. Flip through the pages and discover a series of beautifully illustrated animals, while joining in with the infectious rhythmic text.

This book’s simple and repetitive language makes it the perfect choice for expanding the utterances of little ones. Practice two-word phrases with babies and toddlers by labelling the colour + animal. For example, “I see a… red bird. I see a… black sheep.” Children will easily be able to memorise the text and “read along” with you. The repetitive nature of this book also makes it perfect for teaching the personal pronoun ‘I’ as it is modelled on every page of the story.

Activity Ideas:

  • Create pictures of bears using different resources

  • Play colour bingo/lotto

  • Explore colour - place a large piece of paper down (maybe a roll of wallpaper) and allow children to get creative using lots of different colours

  • Walking water - using a kitchen roll and felt tip pens is a great way to explore colour and colour mixing

  • Using pipettes and different colours to also encourage colour mixing onto white paper

  • Play I spy - "I spy with my little eye something that is blue"

  • Colour Hunt - Use our scavenger hunt template below to go on a colour hunt around the house

  • Encourage the children to help with the washing - can they match the colour socks together?

  • What do you see? Go on a walk around your local area and talk about the things you find on the way round - maybe make it more specific and talk about the animals you see.

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Zim Zam Zoom

Fizzing fireworks, fabulous food, dragons with smelly breath and sploshy puddles all feature in this inspiring book of sixteen zappy poems.

Perfect for reading out loud, at bedtime, playtime or at school, the poems range from funny and exciting to action-packed, adventurous and even a tiny bit scary. All celebrate the art of rhyme and entice both adults and children to zoom around like a rocket, draw the creepiest, beastliest monster ever, or to wiggle their ears and roll their tongues to make funny faces

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