Keep reading for some fun The Gruffalo activities for preschool. These activities are part of our Storytime Club, which includes 10 weeks of book-inspired activities. To learn more about our Storytime Club, click here!
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THE GRUFFALO ACTIVITIES
The Gruffalo is such a fun books for kids! Have you read it yet? The author, Julia Donaldson, also wrote Room on the Broom, which another one of our favorites.
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! 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 The Gruffalo activities that can help bring this story to life for your preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten littles!
These activities are all part of my The Gruffalo printable pack, which can be found in my shop here!
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. And 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: GRUFFALO IN A BAG
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 the Gruffalo Bag (which you can read more 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, they’ll have to sing the special song that’s included in this pack!
FINE MOTOR ACTIVITY: FOREST FRIENDS 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. Check out this great post for the timeline of handwriting development & some ideas for pre-writing activities.
For this activity, students will trace the different lines to get to each forest friend. They’ll also talk about the beginning sound in each animal’s name. Students can use markers to trace, or they could form the lines with play dough or a small manipulative.
GROSS MOTOR ACTIVITY: THE GRUFFALO 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 students 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: GRUFFALO BAG
I mentioned this craft earlier when I was describing this week’s Math Activity. You’ll want to make this to go along with the Gruffalo in a Bag math game. You’ll need a brown paper bag and the printable Gruffalo pieces that come with this pack.
If your students 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: GRUFFALO NO-BAKE COOKIES
These Gruffalo cookies turned out so so cute! This recipe for no-bake cookies is from my Mom, who learned it from my Grandma’s friend many years ago. I 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. So 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!
YOU TUBE: GRUFFALO WORLD
Did you know that the Gruffalo has his own You Tube channel?! Yep, it’s true! Your students will have fun exploring Gruffalo World for this week’s You Tube link.
READING RESPONSE: JOURNAL WRITING PAGE
Teaching our little ones to reflect on what they’ve read is a skill we want to start from the beginning. These journal writing pages allow them to draw and write a response to this story.
THE GRUFFALO PRINTABLE PACK
All of the activities in this pack can be found in our The Gruffalo printable pack, which can be found in my shop here!
Do you love this story, too?! Do you have any fun activities that would be great for it? Comment below or find me on Instagram [@littleslovelearningblog] and let me know!
love these ideas? pin for later!
To check out more book-inspired activities, head over to our Storytime Club!
Happy Learning!
