Keep reading for some fun preschool activities based on The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson. These activities are part of our Storytime Club, which includes activities inspired by 12 books to keep your little one learning ALL year long! To learn more about our Storytime Club, click here!
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THE GRUFFALO ACTIVITIES
The Gruffalo is such a clever book and is sometimes called a modern-day fairy tale! Have you read it yet? The author, Julia Donaldson, also wrote Room on the Broom, which another one of our favorites. She’s such a creative writer!
In this story, a little mouse is walking through the forest. As he meets different animals who want to eat him, he tricks them into thinking he’s friends with the biggest and meanest creature in the forest…the Gruffalo!
The mouse is actually just making up all those things about the Gruffalo (or so he thinks)…until he meets a real Gruffalo! Eek!
Luckily, the mouse is quick to figure out how trick the Gruffalo so he can escape and finish his walk in peace!
Click on the picture below to learn more about this funny book!
Check out these fun activities to bring this story to life for your preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten littles. These are great to use at home with your own kiddos or in your early childhood classroom. If you’re interested, all the printables can be found here.
Click here to check out the song I sing before reading this book!
LITERACY: THE OPPOSITES PATH
Learning about language is an important part of the preschool years. We want our little ones to hear rich vocabulary, understand how words are related to one another, and engage in conversations that use a variety of vocabulary words. That includes learning about opposites.
For this activity, students will play a board game called “The Opposites Path.” They’ll be asked to help the mouse make his way safely through the woods by coming up with words that are opposite of the words they land on. But they have to beware of running into the fox, owl, snake, and Gruffalo!
MATH ACTIVITY: FOREST ANIMAL TEN FRAME
This math activity is super fun! It helps students practice number recognition and matching those numbers to ten frames, which are both important math foundational skills.
First, you’ll want to create a Monster Bag (which you can read about later in this post). Next, you’ll add all of the numbers & Gruffalo cards into the bag.
Students will take turns choosing a card and matching it to the correct ten frame. But if they choose a Gruffalo card, watch out!
FINE MOTOR ACTIVITY: FOREST ANIMAL TRACING
Tracing lines is a great step for our pre-writers and beginning writers. It helps them develop the skills they’ll need to write letters and numbers later on.
For this activity, students will trace different lines to get to each forest animal. They’ll also talk about the beginning sound in each animal’s name (which is great for developing phonemic awareness skills.)
Your little one can use markers to trace, or they could form the lines with play dough or a small manipulative. So many options!
Learn more about the best ways to teach handwriting in preschool in this post!
GROSS MOTOR ACTIVITY: FOLLOW THE FOREST PATH
This activity is meant to be played outside if the weather is nice where you live! Lay out the Gruffalo footprints on the ground, and have your little one say each number as they follow the path. They can walk, run, skip, hop, leap, twirl, gallop…you name it! Try different locomotor skills for them to practice.
You can also switch up the order of the numbers, depending on which numbers you’re practicing. You can have them follow the path in order from 0-20, backwards from 20-0, just even numbers, just odd numbers, counting by 5s, and more! You can also have them step on two footprints and add the numbers together (or subtract them). So many ways to play!
CRAFT: MONSTER BAG
I mentioned this craft earlier when I was describing the math activity for this book (you’ll want to make it before you play that game). You’ll need a brown paper bag and the printable Gruffalo pieces that come with this pack.
If your little ones aren’t quite ready to cut out these challenging shapes, have them cut boxes around each shape, and you can go back & finish cutting them. Then have them glue the pieces to create their very own Gruffalo!
SNACK: MONSTER NO-BAKE COOKIES
These cookies turned out so so cute! This recipe for no-bake cookies is from my mom, who learned it from my Grandma’s friend years and years ago! I actually remember making this recipe as part of a project in 6th grade where I gave a “how to” report with step-by-step instructions to make something.
Needless to say, these cookies are very special to my family!
I thought these would be the perfect cookies to make to create a Gruffalo face, and they turned out better than I imagined! Plus both of my kiddos LOVED them! (*Recipe is included in my Gruffalo pack!)
READING RESPONSE: JOURNAL WRITING & BOOKMARK
To wrap up this unit, you can have your little one write and draw about their favorite part of The Gruffalo. I’ve also included a bookmark that your little one can keep forever to remember this story and the main message: Be a creative problem solver!
THE GRUFFALO ACTIVITY PACK
All of the activities in this post can be found in my The Gruffalo Activity Pack, which can be found in my shop here!
Have you read The Gruffalo yet? Do you have any fun activities that would be great to add to our list? Comment below or find me on Instagram [@littleslovelearningblog] and let me know!
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To check out more book-inspired activities, head over to our Storytime Club!
Happy Learning!
