P3 Read Write Count Activity Bag

Tiny McToot lives in a shoe and sleeps in a matchbox. How tiny does your child think he is? You could ask them to guess, and then measure things around your home with a ruler or tape measure to see if they were right.

At first, the other giants make fun of poor Tiny McToot. You could talk to your child about how this isn’t nice, and what they could do to be kind instead. Our page on kindness has lots of ideas – which ones could the giants try?

Finding rhymes is fun, and it’s a great way for your child to practise their phonics. Percival is a pig in a wig – what other animal rhymes can they find? A cat in a hat? Or how about an elephant in jelly pants? See how silly you can get.

The characters in Meet the Weather go on their adventure in a big pink hot air balloon. You could ask your child to draw their own hot air balloon, and make it as colourful as possible. Who would they take with them on their adventure? A favourite toy? The guinea pig? You? Or maybe a character from another book?

Help your child keep track of the weather by building their own weather station to keep on a windowsill or in the garden. All they need is a container to catch rain, a ruler to measure how much falls, and a stick with some ribbons or string attached, so they can see if they are moving in the wind. If they want to get fancy, they could even make a windmill – this video from CBeebies shows you how.

They could record what they observe about the weather in a notebook, maybe drawing pictures to represent the different kinds of weather, like the symbols on a weather map on TV. Or they could use the stickers in their bag.

Talking about the weather can be a good way to help children understand how they’re feeling. Their emotions are like the weather, but inside them. So if they’re happy, it’s like the sun is out. If they feel sad, it’s raining. If they’re angry, they may feel thunder and lightning inside, and if they’re tired, they may feel foggy! 

If they’re feeling ‘rainy’, what can they do to help the sun come out? Our page on helping children deal with worries has some ideas that may help here.

Have a look at all the Mythical Mayhem cards with your child. Which is their favourite? They could have a go at drawing their own made up creature. Ask them to think about how tall they are, how much they weigh, how old they are and what their special skill is. Make sure they give them a name!

Pick a character, item and setting from the story cards and see if your child can come up with a story about them. Select one of each at random and then let your imaginations run wild! You could take it in turns with your child to build the story sentence by sentence, and to pick more cards to add to the story.

The mindfulness cards have ideas to help your child relax. One of them suggests doing a yoga pose. In this video, Cosmic Kids Yoga show you some poses you could try – some of them are quite tricky!

Mr Wolf stands at the front of the room with his back to the other players. The other players ask “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?” and he replies with a time, for example, “6 o’clock”. The players all take that number of steps forward then ask again. At any moment, Mr Wolf can reply “Lunchtime!” and start chasing everyone. Whoever he catches is the next Mr Wolf.

To make this more challenging, instead of saying the time, Mr Wolf can draw it on the clock face in the bag and hold it up over his head. He could make it even harder by making the time “half past 6” so you only take half a step!

Open up the clock in the bag and you’ll find a game of Snakes and Ladders. Land at the bottom of a ladder and you climb up it. But land on the head of a snake and you slide back down. Who can be the first to reach 100? 

There's a dice in your activity bag, but if you don't have it to hand you can always search online for ‘random number generator’ then ask it to generate a number between 1 and 6.

On the back of the Snakes and Ladders game you’ll find a grid of dots. You can use this to play a game of boxes. Each player takes a turn to draw a line on the grid connecting two dots horizontally or vertically. If they manage to create a box on their go, they write their initial in the box. The winner is the person with the most boxes once the grid is full. 

You can find more fun resources for your using the P3 bag with your child on the Scottish Book Trust website.