What is an Invitation to Read? Invitation to Read is all about books and play and we want to share some of our ideas around it.
We adore books at The Creative Toy Shop and we thought we would share some ideas and activities that you can incorporate with your child's favourite book.
What is an Invitation to Read?
More recently, known on Instagram as an 'Invitation to Read' this is where you create learning and play activities around a particular book.
A great example of this type of learning is this fantastic image above from Wooden Toy Love.
For a teacher, it might be a class book you are reading for the term or it might be your child's favourite book. The concept of this type of learning activity is that you want to explore different ideas and themes from the chosen book.
Sometimes, you start with the book you want to explore and other times, you might check to see what toys you have in your playroom and then find a book that matches the toys you own.
For a book like 'The Big Book of Blue' by Yuval Zommer, you could use Ostheimer sea animals, CollectA animals and a blue Sarah's silk to explore ideas around ocean life, the life of a mammal and fun facts about dolphins or turtles. For classroom activities, you could look at ideas around plastic in our seas and climate change. The possibilities are endless!
For instance, for a classic book like 'Old Macdonald Has a Farm', you can use wooden animals from Ostheimer, CollectA animals, add Sarah's Silks for your farm and then pop some of our wooden fruit and vegetables in a metal tray (buy from Kmart) or plastic dip and chip tray (from Spotlight, Target or $1 stores).
For a book such as 'Above & Below The City Book', you could use Way to Play road track, Hape Car Puzzles, Grimm's cars or our Connetix tiles to help build your own city. You could use these toys to explore life in the city, jobs, the use of cars, public transport or ideas around counting and maths.
And lastly, one of our favourite books at The Creative Toy Shop, Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.
For this Invitation to Read, you could use our Grimms 3 in a boat, CollectA penguin and our Sarah's Silk for the Sea and explore ideas around friendship, connection, togetherness and wellbeing.
We hope you enjoyed this blog post we would love you to share your ideas for invitations to read. AND don't forget we have launched our first Book Subscription Box, Little Readers and each month we will be sending you 2 books and activity guides aka invitation to read that can be used for play and learning.
Tag us in your posts or stories with #tctsinvitationtoread, so we can share them.
Brianna x
