Are You My Mother? – Make Story Retelling Fun And Easy

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Preview: Story retelling activities for preschool with popular Dr. Seuss’ – “Are you my mother?” kids book and free pattern to make felt bird characters.

This summer I have heard totally cool story; My preschool daughter is totally in love with diggers. She spent summer chasing construction workers with her babysitter and every day I would come to pick her up, I would hear new story of the day in excitement. Like when digger honk a horn to her when they went for a walk, or when she met digger girls who let her sit in a real digger. Now she wants to be a digger girl too.

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But one day, story I’ve heard was totally cool. One of the construction workers, who she seen every morning they went for a walk, told her a story why he become a digger man in a first place. When he was a little boy his mom would read him a Dr. Seuss book – Are you my mother?

In that story little birdie falls out of her nest and goes in a search for her mother walking. In the end digger saves her and put her back up in to the nest. That story was so inspiring for him and all he ever wanted was to become big hero digger who saves little birdie.

I was thrilled with that inspiring story and ordered a board book – shorter version and much smaller in a size. It was an instant love. My daughter knows every word, even thought she does not know how to read. Seeing that excitement when reading a story I got an idea to make an easy story telling activity. Last book that I turned in to interactive felt board play was inspired by Eric Carle’s book ‘Brown bear, brown bear what do you see?’ and she still plays with it.

Needless to say, she has so much fun playing whole drama from word to word.

Mommy and baby bird characters – hand stitched felt toys for fun story retelling

For this story retelling activities for preschool kids we used characters we had on hand but what we didn’t have two main characters – mommy bird and baby bird. While I took and cut pieces out of felt, she got task to gather animals from her farm barn set: cow, dog, kitten, hen and digger toy. When all was done we set up scenery.

Here is how you can make mommy and baby bird in less than 30 minutes.

Materials you will need:

printed free pattern
felt assorted colours of your choice
freezer paper (optional)
needle and embroidery thread
scissors
poly fill stuffing

Simple and easy steps how to make hand stitched felt bird

Print out free pattern and cut all the pieces. Use colours that you wish, I used browns, beige and pink. These are tiny pieces and to cut them precisely I recommend cutting with freezer paper.
Stitch wings as market on the pattern, only on top and that will make them flap. If you have younger kids who may pull and break it consider stitch wings all the way around. You may also glue them with felt glue, this is optional.
Stitch tummy to one side of the body, starting at ‘A’ point.
When you come to the B point place other part of the body on top, so tummy stays in the middle.
Insert beak on its place, between to body pieces.
Continue and stitch around head, beak and birdie back, finishing at tail.
This is step where I usually make eyes with thick embroidery thread. (Tip: you may use fabric pen marker instead to draw instead stitch eyes).
Start filling the body with poly fill stuffing from head towards tail.
Stitch the rest of the tummy, starting from ‘B’ point this time, all the way to the neck.
Now repeat all steps with baby bird.

Now all you have to do is gather your farm animals, digger and play can start. We made a tree from paper roll and nest from materials I have had, wooden bowl from play kitchen and some fake grass. I also had one of my play mats which helped to create nice scenery.

Related: Handcrafted scenery play mat that made unique toddler gift.

So here it is, pretty simple and fun to practice story retelling activities for preschool. I know the story about that digger man who became digger man because of this book, will stick in my head for a long time.
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