Education Category: General, Language
Ages: 4-8, 8-12, 12-16

Act Out a Story: A Place for my fruit

Just as kids need vocabulary to help them describe attributes, they also need vocabulary for describing position, direction, and relationships.

Learning spatial relationships means beginning to understand right and left, top and bottom, under, between, in front of, behind, and other position and direction words.

Help your child learn these important vocabulary words and understand what they mean with this hands-on, exploratory activity that helps him

learn spatial relationships through doing.

As you read a story about a boy, a fruit, and his search for the perfect place to put it, he'll act it out with his own fruit. Everytime Andre moves his fruit, he'll move his fruit there too!

What You Need:

1. Small fruit (or any other in-season fruit or vegetable)
2. Circle Time Story: A Place for Fruit printable
3. Key words printable
4. Wagon (optional)

Read Andre's Pumpkin Story

What to Do:

1. Gather your story materials together: A Place for Fruit story and the key words sheet.
2. Go outside with your child and select a good spot to be the vegetable/fruit garden in the story.
3. Have him place his fruit or vegetable in the 'vegetable/fruit garden'.
4. Explain to him that you'll be reading a story about his fruit (or vegetable), and encourage him to follow along with the story by acting it out with his fruit. When the story says he picked the fruit, for example, he should do the same with his real fruit.
5. Now it's story time! Read the story about Andre's fruit, keeping a very slow pace so your child has time to act out Andre's actions as they happen. Place emphasis on the key words as they appear in the story, and make sure he understands each one before reading on.

Here are a few other things you can do everyday to help your child learn and understand spatial relationships:

• Take advantage of opportunities to talk about the position of people and objects.
• Model appropriate vocabulary.
• If he uses a word incorrectly, repeat the phrase or sentence using the correct term.
• Observe how he uses and responds to direction and position words.
• Make sure he is familiar with spatial vocabulary words.
• Watch as he draws pictures of himself and others. Are arms and legs shown coming off the trunk?
• Are facial features arranged appropriately? Remember that it's age appropriate for young kids to draw bodies and objects disproportionately.
   

Some examples of Keywords for Defining Direction:

around
away
back
before
behind
below
beside
bottom
center
down
end
finish
first
forward   
from
front
here
high
in front of
inside
over
start
there
through
top
under
up
last
low
middle
near
next
next to
on
out
outside
...