Goat goes to Playgroup by Julia Donaldson and Nick Sharratt and published by Macmillan is a lovely story about a goat at playgroup. It is a rhyming book with brightly coloured pictures and one of our firm favourites. Goat gets up to mischief, has fun and is a very lovable character.
Activities
Weeding
Singing
Obstacle course
Sand - containers, shapes
Edible sand
Snack time and overcoming mishaps discussion
Dressing up
Reading
Painting
Making a drum
Rhyming words
Pretend dinner
Outdoor
Goat takes part in outdoor activities while he is at playgroup such as weeding and singing and these are nice easy activities to do at home which take little to no prep to get going. You could set up an obstacle course for your child/children and time how long it takes them to get through it. Goat plays in the sand so you could set up an easy sand activity that includes pouring sand into different shaped and sized containers or if you have some biscuit cutters handy they could cut some shapes out in the sand. Just don't forget to give them a good wash before you reuse them again.
Food/Cooking
A fantastic activity that goes along with this book (I have been wanting to share this activity for a while) is making and playing in edible sand. Kids love it. You can make the sand using digestive biscuits or any kind of cereal really. The ingredient you choose just needs to be crushed until it looks like sand. This can be done using a food bag and rolling pin or a blender to mash up the ingredients. Then put it on a tray (if you child is young and uses a highchair you can put it straight on their highchair tray). This is a fun activity for younger or older children but I think it is a really good activity for younger children, especially those who like to eat sand (my son went through that stage and his Daddy found it disgusting). I did encourage him not to eat the sand when he played during this activity, even though it was edible, I didn't want him to get confused when he went to the beach but with it being edible it didn't matter too much when he had a little nibble. Grapes and juice are mentioned in the story so your child/children could have these for snack time and you can read the book with them and chat about the story and how goat spends his day. It would be a good time to talk about Goat's mishaps and how he can overcome them.
Indoor
There are lots of fun indoor activities mentioned in the story, such as dressing up, reading and painting and these are all fun activities that can take place at home. Goat joins a band so you could make a drum with your child/children and you can be as creative as you want. If you are not the creative type you could give them a wooden spoon and saucepan and if you are the creative type you could make one. There are many different ways to make drums but a nice easy way is using a tub, balloon and elastic band. Cut the balloon and put it over the tub and secure with an elastic band. You want it as taut as you can to make a good sound. Then your child/children can make their own band. With older children you can look at the rhyming words and with younger children they can make you some pretend dinner. If you don't have any replica food you can use dry pasta or uncooked rice. It can get messy but it's good fun and doesn't take too long to clean up.
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