Activity of the Month - June 2021

Pip & Posy & the Big Balloon

A wonderful story to support early social and emotional learning

This book is great for children around the ages 2-5 years old. Adapt your language level according to your child’s age and stage.

Goals:

So many goals for one book! Here’s just a few:

• Recognising and labelling emotions

• Understanding characters have different feeling and thoughts (theory of mind)

• Retelling a story in sequence

• Understanding descriptive words

• Understanding and using pronouns ‘he’ ‘she’ ‘his’ ‘her’ ‘they’

• Practising speech sounds /b/ /p/

Ideas

• Help your child to begin to build their knowledge around books by looking at the front cover together:

  • What’s it about?

  • What is the book called?

  • For older children talk about the title and the author

• Descriptive language:

  • What is Pip wearing? What are you wearing? Introduce vocabulary to describe clothes - e.g. stripy / spotty, colours ‘Pip is wearing a stripy jumper?’ ‘You are wearing ______ (blue trousers) etc

  • Encourage your child to finish the sentence to describe the balloon ‘The balloon is ______ and ______ and _______’ (big and round and red

• What can you see? - the pictures in the book have lots of little details in. For younger children, take turns saying what you can see in the pictures e.g. p3/4 ‘I can see a bird sitting on a bike!’ ‘I can see a green frog’ - this is a great way of checking your child’s comprehension though listening as they find the things you describe. With older children you can play a version of ‘I spy’ using Initial letter sounds, ‘I spy with my little eye, something beginning with /d/ (door).

• Highlight emotions in the story, drawing attention to the facial expressions on the characters, e.g. p5/6 ‘Look, the fox is smiling, he’s feeling ____ (happy). Introduce other words for emotions too, and for older children explain why the character is feeling that way, ‘Pip is feeling excited because he has a new balloon'. p9-10 ‘Look at Posy’s face - how is she feeling?’ (surprised, worried, shocked etc). Try different facial expressions with your child ‘Can you look surprised?’

• Predict what might happen next. Encourage your child to guess what may happen next in the story. You can model different ideas to show your child that we all have different ideas and thoughts - this helps your child’s developing theory of mind. Go over what you all think, ‘Daddy thinks the balloon will go pop!’ ‘I think it will float up in the sky’.

• The illustrations are great to use to guess what someone might be saying, e.g. p11/12, ‘What is the cat saying? ……. ‘Look! a red balloon’ or ‘Get the balloon!’ You could use a thought bubble and write in it for an older child e.g. p19/20 ‘I’ve got an idea!’

• Pause to give your child opportunities throughout to comment on what is happening spontaneously, e.g. p15/16 ‘Oh dear! ….(pause).

• Check comprehension using open questions, e.g. p17/18 ‘What happened?’ ‘Why is Pip crying?’

• Highlight pronouns through out the story p5/6 ‘She’s first’, e.g. p19/20 ‘He’s so sad’ ‘She has a great idea’. Think together about what Pip’s idea maybe - you may all have different ideas. Explain more complex ideas, ‘Posy wanted to make him feel better, so she shared her bubbles’ ‘They are blowing bubbles’

• Highlight /b/ sounds - blow, balloon, bubbles & /p/ sounds - Pip, Posy, pop, pop.