Goodnight Moon is an American children’s book written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. First published in 1947, this book’s popularity, charm, and quality still remain constant to this day. All of my children proclaimed this book to be a bedtime favorite at some point. The book is simple, sweet, and a wonderful way to gently lay your children down to sleep. Due to how loved the book is by so many children it is a great place to start a book study for little ones. Creating lessons from favorite books will encourage your child to read and spark a love for learning.
When I think of Goodnight Moon, I think of rhyming, pairs, sequence, rich reds and greens and a comfy chair. I wanted to create activities that played off of these images. So, I came up with a small activity a day for my 5 and 2 and half year old to do daily. Here is the list of ideas we will enjoy over the next week.
A Pair of Pears: I used construction paper and cut out pear shapes. Next, I made every two look the same by decorating them in the same fashion. The object was for the little ones to match the pears into pairs. To extend the lesson, I had them match up shoes and gloves.
Scavenger Hunt: I made pictures of objects in Goodnight Moon on index cards. I picked out a few at a time and had the children find the pictured objects from around the house.
Story Sequencing: I made sequence cards by using index cards and pictures of images in Goodnight Moon. I simply glued the picture on the each index card. Then the children had to put the cards in order of who the bunny said goodnight to.
Rhyming balloons: I cut out red balloon shapes from construction paper. On each balloon I wrote a word from the story and drew a picture of the word. I also made several other balloon rhyming words which were not in the story but rhymed. My five year old matched all the rhyming words. This was activity is not for a 2 year old but she did have fun saying the rhyming words.
Red and Green: For my four year old I had cut wrote the color red in red marker and the color green in green marker. She had previously mastered reading these two words. Then I wrote red in green marker and green in red marker to see if she would read the word or reply by the color of the word. This was simply for fun and it did bring some laughter. In addition, with both children we played a red and green scavenger hunt game. To increase the level of difficulty for my 5 year old, I would ask her to bring me something that starts with the letter “a” that is green and so on. I would also ask each of them to bring me “3” of something red, etc.