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ACTIVITY: Making a Folded Paper AnimalCrafts are a wonderful way to help build your child’s language skills. Here is one craft that is fun to do together. Although the instructions look lengthy, this craft is actually quick and easy to do. This craft is adapted from: Making a Folded Paper Bear by Brenda Boreham. See specific instructions below.
Creating the Folded Animal
Make a folded animal along with your child. You can talk about what you are doing and compare notes, which is great for language development. For example, you could say, “Wow, you are cutting the circle really well” or “Look, the ears on my bear are bigger”. This craft is great for reinforcing school-related vocabulary like “trace”, “fold” and “overlap”. This craft also provides lots of practice in following instructions. Have your child take a turn “being the teacher”! If your child is old enough, they can read the instructions for one section and check if you follow them correctly. Make one or two mistakes on purpose for your child to catch. Playing with the Folded Animals Take another look at your animals and compare and contrast their features. What is the same? What is different? This helps your child think about the attributes of objects, such as colour, size and shape. Tell stories using the masks. Emphasize using lots of expression when telling a story. You could model telling a story in a monotone voice. Have your child retell the story with lots of expression. This helps build your child’s memory for retelling stories and gives them practice using their voice to add interest to the story. Making the Folded Animals You will need:
Cut a circle shape
Fold the circle
Overlap and glue
Make the ears (if needed)
Hint – you could cut tiny slits of paper on the edge of the ears to make them look furry Make the nose and snout or beak
Add eyes and whiskers
Hint – you can also cut out whiskers from paper and curl them around the end of a pencil before gluing. How did this craft go for you? Let me know your ideas for working on speech and language skills while creating and playing with these folded animals. |