ChaeStrathie Learning Resources

Explore bedtime stories and routines, space and much more through the books of ChaeStrathie

CFE Early level (Age 3-5)

Resources created by Carolyn Sharp, Librarian, Learning Resource Service, Falkirk Council

About these resources

These resources are full of cross-curricular activity suggestions to help you explore Bedtime for Tiny Mouse, The Fabulous Flapdoodles and The Loon on the Moon with your pupils in library and classroom activities. Adapt and use as you see fit! The resources have been produced to help you make the most of our online Authors Live event with ChaeStrathie, but you can use them at any point to engage pupils with Chae’s books and the themes of bedtime, space and much more.

It is important to stress that the ideas are only suggestions and may be adapted to suit the needs of your group. Some of the activities are structured, others are less formal.

Floor books can be used to record the children’s comments alongside photographs and artwork and are ideal for keeping all your evidence together!

You can watch the event on 21 May 2015 – here is the link to register for free:

If you don’t watch the event on the day, you will be able to view or download it afterwards from our Watch on Demand section:

About ChaeStrathie

ChaeStrathie is a reporter, columnist, sub-editor for a national newspaper AND a children’s author!Chae’spicture booksincludeMy Dad, The Tickle Tree and Ping! The Loon on the Moon was short-listed for the Scottish Children's Book Awards and won the Dundee Picture Book Award in 2012. Jumblebum, a funny cautionary tale for messy children, won the 2013 Bookbug readers category at the Scottish Children’s Book Awards. You can watch the author readingJumblebumaloud at:

Contents

Bedtime for Tiny Mouse activities Page2

The Fabulous Flapdoodles activities Page 7

The Loon on the Moon activities Page10

Activities to explore the theme of bedtime Page 13

Transition project Page 15

Further readingPage 15

Bedtime for Tiny Mouse

In this delightful little tale, Tiny Mousejust cannot get to sleep: his head isfull of fizz and there are fireworks in his feet!The story opens up lots of avenues to explore day and night and also activities on the concept of time.

Listening and Talking Lit 1-07a

  • Use the Thinking Reader strategies to discuss the book before reading it. Saying the title and then discussing the book’s cover, what do the children think the book is about? The Thinking Reader strategies are usually used from primary 1 onward but can be used in nursery as they help you discuss the book with the children. Information on the Thinking Reader can be found on the Education Scotland website:
  • What did Tiny Mouse get up to during the day that gave him fireworks in his feet? Using a mouse puppet or toy as our hero, get the children to ask questions about Tiny Mouse’s day. The children could work in small groups and take turns at being Tiny Mouse. The children could then create a display of what Tiny Mouse got up to during the day that made his head so full of fizz!

Expressive Arts/TechnologiesTch 0-12a, Exa 1-02a, Exa 1-03a

  • Children can make their own ‘quilt’ for Tiny Mouse by drawing pictures and attaching them to each other to create a collage. Get them to think about things he might like to see on the quilt (look at the pictures hanging up in his house for some inspiration!). They could find out some fun facts about mice and depict these on the quilt; alternatively, they could recreate the events of the story in pictures (a good opportunity to support retelling skills).

After this, you could invite another class in to tell them all about the pictures on your quilt and share the story with them.

Sciences SCN 0-01a

  • Discuss why some animals only appear at night (Raintree’s Night Safari series provides good clear information and photographs for early level). What do the animals do at night? Look at different nocturnal animals compared to animals that come out during the day – what are the differences (you could focus on the size of their eyes e.g. compare owls with other birds)?You could introduce food chains and webs using animal photographs and toys to show who eats who. Please be aware that this activity will not be suitable for some children, especially as a mouse is the hero of the book!
  • Using a selection of pictures or animal soft toys/puppets,have the children sort the animals into daytime animals and nocturnal animals. You could use a Venn diagram and have the central area for animals that you see both in the daytime and at night.

Music and movementExa 0-08a, Exa 0-12a

  • This activity is based on nocturnal animals. The children become nocturnal animals. Initially the children practice using their bodies to make the shape of the animals; for example a cat, hedgehog, bat, owl, mouse, and fox. The children then could act out the following short sequences and then develop their own ideas to create little stories. The children could also create costumesto use in the scenes as part of a craft activity.

-The cat wakes up, yawns and stretches, before leaping onto a wall. Carefully he walks along the wall where he sees a little mouse scurrying along on the ground. The mouse stops, his nose twitching in the air. The cat stops. Very carefully and quietly the cat stretches out his paw, ready to pounce and …. missed it! The mouse runs away.

-An owl perched on a branch opens one eye, then the other, flies through the air and lands on the ground.

-A hedgehog is snuffling amongst the leaves. Someone is coming so he roles himself into a little ball and hides.

-The fox is spying on the farm; he sniffs the air smelling the hens. He creeps up to the shed where the hens are asleep but a light comes on in the farmhouse and the fox runs away.

-You are animals hiding in the forest at night. When music plays all the animals come out from hiding. What do the animals do in the forest at night? When the music stops, all the animals return to their hiding places.

  • Tiny Mouse dances to some different types of music in the book, which can be a great way to explain to the children that we can dance differently to different types of music.

Get the children to look at the pictures of Tiny Mouse dancing, and play them an example of each type of music, seeing if they can guess which piece of music Tiny Mouse might be dancing to in each picture.

Get the children to create different dances for the different types of music in the book. What kind of movements would suit each type of music?

To find some more music to dance to, you can check out Scottish Book Trust's pirate songs:

Maths and Numeracy MNU 0-10a

  • Take photographs of events that happen throughout the day to introduce the concept of time. This could be a home project involving parents/carers. The photographs could be mounted next to clock faces showing the times of day.

Sciences SCN 0-11a, SCN 0-15a

  • Use a night sky parachute, and/or black out material to create a dark area. Provide flexible mirrors so that children can explore using mirrors to look at themselves and at objects in the room. Take the mirrors into your dark area; how well can you see yourself in the mirror now?
  • In your dark area, provide a selection of shiny things such as tin foil, sequins, and foil sweet papers and so on. Let the children explore looking at these in sunlight, in a dark place and by torchlight. Ask them to tell you about the shiny things and when are they most shiny, e.g. in strong light.
  • Use a reflective and high visibility vest. Explore looking at these in daylight and in a darkened room and by torchlight. What happens?
  • Use a selection of coloured objects. Discuss the colours with the children in daylight. Now place them in a dark area. What happens? Can you tell what colour they are now?
  • Do we need light to see things? Using a shoe box, paint the inside of the box and lid with black paint. When the paint is dry, make a hole at one end of the box to peek through. Make 3 holes in the lid. Now place different coloured objects in the box.

What can you see?

Cover one of the holes in the lid. What can you see now?

Cover a second hole and look again. Which objects can you still see?

Cover the last hole. Can you see anything?

Now shine a torch through one of the top holes and look again. What happens?

  • Switch the lights off or use your “dark room”. Use a UV torch to examine how differently items look under UV light. Pour some Indian tonic water into a glass. Now shine the UV torch through the glass. What happens? (Tonic water glows under UV light).
  • Collect a mixture of objects, including some transparent objects (such as soft drinks bottles). Using a torch, shine the light at each object. Which objects form shadows, which block the light and which let the light through? You could also use a light box for this activity.
  • Using a selection of torches, discuss which torch is best in a dark area. Are the torches of any use during the day or when the lights are on?
  • Discuss with the children what colours should be worn on a dark night so that they can be seen by motorists? Use a darkened room and see what happens if you wear a white, or light coloured t-shirt compared to a dark or black shirt. Which is easiest to see in the dark and with a torch? Now try it wearing a hi-vis jacket.

Sciences SCN 0-12a

  • Discuss with the children what we need to be able to see things. Ask them to stand still and look around for things they can see. Ask them to look up, down, and to either side. Which things are near? What is far away? Which things can you see clearly and which things do you need to be near to see them clearly? What happens when you use different things to look through? For example, bug eye glasses, telescopes/binoculars (being careful not to look at the sun). You could also use colour boards – what happens?
  • Ask the children what they can do with their eyes closed.

Can they put on their socks with their eyes closed?

Can they sort shapes with their eyes closed?

What is easier with their eyes open?

  • Place a straw in a glass of water. Now look at it through the side of the glass and see how to straw has magically split. This is due to refraction, a little complicated to explain to young children but a good party trick and gets little brain cells firing. Refraction occurs when light bends as it passes from one medium to another.

The Fabulous Flapdoodles

The Fabulous Flapdoodles come out at night to watch over and protect sleeping children everywhere! The night/bedtime theme of this book could be used as part of a day and night theme and many of the suggested activities for Bedtime for Tiny Mouse could also be used to support The Fabulous Flapdoodles.

Listening and Talking Lit 1-07a

  • Use the Thinking Reader strategies to discuss the book before reading it. After hearingthe title and then discussing the book’s cover, what do the children think the book is about? The Thinking Reader strategies are usually used from primary 1 onward but they are really useful to help children talk about books. Information on the Thinking Reader can be found on the Education Scotland website:

Literacy Lit 0-12a, Lit 0-13a, Lit 0-21a

  • The Fabulous Flapdoodles is told in rhyming text. To introduce rhyming words to the children, collect objects and/or pictures of things that rhyme. The children can then listen to the sound of the words and then sort the objects into groups. For example:
  • Bat, cat, rat
  • Scale, snail, whale
  • Cake, snake, rake
  • The Fabulous Flapdoodles title is ideal for introducing alliteration and finding words that begin with the same sounds. Again you could use objects to group together words that begin with the same letters/sounds to give the children a focus. For example:
  • Nest, newspaper and nose
  • Duck, dog and dinosaur
  • Pencil, paper and paperclip

If you do the shadow theatre activities further down this page and ask children to make new monsters for the Flapdoodles to combat, this activity can be a nice lead in: you could ask children to come up with monsters which have alliterated names, eg., the Horrible Hulk, Terrible Turtle, etc.

  • Other great rhyming books to use at story time are:
  • Jumblebum by ChaeStrathie
  • Aliens Love Underpantsby Claire Freedman
  • Room On The Broomby Julia Donaldson
  • The Great Sheep Shenanigansby Peter Bently
  • I'm Sure I Saw A Dinosaurby Jeanne Willis

Expressive Arts Exa 0-17a, Exa 1-03a, Exa 1-02a, Exa 0-12a, Lit 1-07a, Lit 0-09a

  • Get a ‘willing’ volunteer to dress up as a Flapdoodle, or design a Flapdoodlepuppet (a sock puppet would work well for a Flapdoodle!). This Flapdoodlehas lost something (it could be its hat, box or spell book). Ask the children to design and make(for example) a new hat. The children could work in groups and ask the Flapdoodlequestions about what type of hat they would like. Each group could then display their finished hats.
  • You could also do a sorting activity with the Flapdoodle’s box. Fill a box with a variety of things (such as different patterned socks) and ask the children to help the Flapdoodle match the items.
  • The Fabulous Flapdoodles make shadow monsters on the wall that frightened away the night monsters. Here are some ideas for your own shadow theatre!

-An overhead projector can be placed behind a white sheet to create a shadow theatre. Alternatively, a light is projected onto a sheet or wall to allow children to make hand shadows.

-Children might concentrate on exploring their own shadow fingers and hands. You can find how to make animal shapes with your hands on the internet (this video is a good start: . Can the children guess what they are?

-Different objects and materials could be introduced into a shadow theatre. What are they?

-Play different kinds of music to influence the way the shadows move. George Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm’ can be a good piece to use for energetic movement: To provide a contrast, you could use Grieg’s ‘Morning Mood’:

-Shadow theatre can also promote story or play making.The children can make characters from a story and act out their own version.The children draw the characters on a piece of card or paper, cut it out, then attach it to a short stick (chopsticks are ideal for this). This can be done as a solo, pair or small group activity.If you want some readymade characters, try the cut outs we've produced to help children make up a bedtime story on the Scottish Book Trust website: you could get your children to create their own Flapdoodle puppets. The children may also want to make up their own stories rather than recreate the original story.

-Children can create some new monsters for the Flapdoodles to combat in their shadow theatre. This could done by drawing, painting, making sculptures from salt dough or from empty boxes and cartons. Can the children think of a name for their creation? Reusing the boxes could also form part of a recycling topic.

Health and Wellbeing HWB 0-22a

  • As well as using a shadow theatre children can experiment and play with shadows both indoors and outdoors. Children could play shadow tig – where you try to stand on someone’s shadow.

Maths MNU 1-11a

  • The fabulous Flapdoodles travel on their broom made for six – in size order. Sort the children into a line, smallest to tallest. You could do this in your groups or as a whole class exercise. What would make a difference to your height? For example, high heeled shoes, standing on tip toes, crouching down and so on). Take a photograph of the class or group. Use a height chart to record the children’s heights. You could carry the size theme on into P1. Have the children stand again in a line. Has everyone grown at the same speed or has the line-up changed? The children could compare their own heights – how much have they grown?

Expressive Arts Exa 0-12a, HWB 0-20a, HWB 1-20a