Don't do this at home! Cutesy shaped books

Creating a cute little shape book with Isadora proved to not be as motivating as I had hoped.

Ugh! What a slacker I have been. I graduated with my PhD almost a month ago and I have done nothing with this blog. To get myself back in the swing of things, I am going to try to limit myself to no more than ten minute updates. We'll see how that goes.

Over the course of the last 8 months I have talked about all the literacy activities that have met with success when I did them with Isadora. Well, here is a supreme dud. Why tell you about a lame literacy activity to do with a preschooler? To save you from the same mistake!

So here is my first mistake: I went for cute. I was thumbing through an old teaching guide that showed you how to make these adorable little shaped books (books shaped like rockets, books shaped like owls, etc.) and I thought one of them would be inspiring for Isadora. Surely a cute little penguin book would inspire her to make up a fabulous story that I could write down. So I sat down with her and she picked out this cute little book that looked like a pond with a little duck floating in the middle. Okay - I'll stop with the buildup. Here's what happened: I cut out all the little pieces for about ten minutes while Isadora colored and played with her little brother. Once I proudly displayed MY creation to Isadora, she was no longer interested. Sadly, I was now so invested in this lame project that I basically made up the story myself and wrote it down, prodding her every step of the way. It was about three short sentences long. Shameful.

So after all that work, Isadora did not like it and it really did not inspire the kind of creativity and excitement that I had hoped. I realized that I had done all the creating for this project, taking all ownership away from her. No wonder she wasn't interested. I get much better stories out of her when she makes a scribble and we label it "fog." Well, you can't win them all.