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Advantage: I like the whole set and the complete of the resources. For example, there are road, river, bed and so on.

Disadvantage: It's time consume to make all the resources. There is no lock for the cages.

Modification: Add the lock for the cage.

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Putting together a story basket for your children's favourite book is a great way to expand on traditional storytelling! Setting the scene in a small world kind of way allows children to relive the story over and over again. Not only will they be the story teller, they might even make up their own side stories and alternative endings. There will be a deeper exploration of the main characters and the background scene as children are able to physically manipulate each aspect of the story. Sit back, observe and enjoy these adorable moments in play!

Find out below what we chose to put in the Good Night Gorilla story basket and read how you can easily put one together yourself.

Anything can go in the story basket. Story baskets are originally baskets with random objects from the play room, daily life or nature which prompt children (or adults) to tell a story using those objects.

In this case we put together a story basket based on a book my children love: Good Night Gorilla . Usually when we put together a story basket for a specific book, we try to find items that match the main characters or scene setting of the story.

Let me show you the images and talk you through the different scenes:

The story is about a zoo keeper who does his last round of the day, saying good night to all of the animals. Then things just don't quite go as they should ...

We used our Djeco stacking blocks as the animals' homes. For every animal that features in the story we found a representative from our own mini animal collection. We didn't have an armadillo, so I wrapped some yarn around a little dinosaur and it did the trick!

Our Duplo police officer played the zoo keeper. He used one of our Playmobil people's lanterns as a flash light and we made him some keys from a loom band, paper clips and a safety pin. (Please be mindful of potential hazards when using small and/or sharp little objects in play and always supervise your children.)

The loom band worked brilliantly. Small people can easily switch the keys from the zoo keeper to the gorilla themselves.

My children thought it was hilarious and my daughter spent quite some time figuring out how the gorilla could have stolen the keys without the zoo keeper noticing. "He must have been very sleepy that evening, mommy!"

The mouse and the banana had to be present too of course. This handmade felt mouse is huge compared to the tiny mouse in the story but we don't seem to care much.

I took a banana from our LEGO set and glued a rubber band together with a glue gun. This way the rubber band held the banana and the children could put it around the mouse themselves.

To set the scene I used one of our play mats. The one you can see on the images has been around for over a year and survived all sorts of toddler and preschool shenanigans with surprising grace!

All play mat love aside, you can easily improvise your own play scene by using blankets, shawls, t-shirts, napkins, fabric scraps and so on. Just like we did here and here.

I confess that I made this little felt bed just for the occasion. I couldn't resist. Most of our figurines have their own beds and there's a tutorial on them here should you want to take a look. We think it's adorably cute and I enjoy these little handwork projects so much.

If you have no time or interest in making something yourself, you can use a wash cloth, handkerchief, winter hat, plastic container or whatever you or your children can come up with at the time!

We also recycled the little cardboard door from our "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" scene, which is simply cut out from a cereal box, taped with painter's tape and drawn on. Children quite like using real functioning little doors to put their animals and figurines through!

Story baskets are a lot of fun and so incredibly easy to set up. You don't even have to go into much detail, that is just something that I personally enjoy doing. I'm a big fan of small world play (have a look at all of our small worlds here) and the details are what I love most about setting up play scenes.

It's quite fun to look at certain aspects of the story and think about how you can represent them in your basket. My daughter (who is almost 5) loves thinking along with me and together we brainstorm about which animals and figurines we'll use and how to set the scene and work out the little details.

I think it's a great exercise in creativity and ideally you'd leave children to their own creative processes. But since I enjoy this so much too, it's something we often do together in our family.

Also, not all children naturally gravitate towards imaginative play and some might need a bit of support. Having a book and a story basket is a great and safe way to venture into the world of imaginative play: you have your story line and your props and by playing out the story you can gently stretch those little minds by asking questions and exploring alternative scenes along with them.

Have a look at our other story baskets here for ongoing story basket inspiration.

Enjoy!

Ann*
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Good Night Gorilla Story Basket - Little Worlds

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Putting together a story basket for your children's favourite book is a great way to expand on traditional storytelling! Setting the scene in a small world kind of way allows children to relive the story over and over again. Not only will they be the story teller, they might even make up their own side stories and alternative endings.

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Advantage: Children can create the cages with the blocks by themselves. More imagination for children.

Disadvantage: It's quite hard for children with special needs to understand, some of them lack of pretend play.

Modification: Use visual as a prompt -- show them visuals of all the cages. They can refer to the visual and make the cage.

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Over the last month, we saw the beginning of a passionate love that has the potential to last for many years. Budster has fallen in love with Lego. Up until now, Budster's favourite toys have been hammers, brooms, even lemon squeezers, and of course, books and paints. He has liked to play in dirt and splash in water, but one night, his Daddy, a person with a long history of Lego building, found a block with wheels and made a car for Budster. It changed everything, and Budster spends hours every day, creating whimsical constructions. As a result, a lot of our games have taken a Lego spin. We are fond of playing our favourite books out. Good Night, Gorilla ( review) is still high on the list of our favourites, and colourful blocks of Lego seemed perfect for creating a zoo scene. Every animal's cage is painted differently, so we collected four different colours of blocks and built cages. Afterwards, Budster worked on making a car for the zookeeper. In Budster's world everything is better if you add a car. And why not? The zoo is big, and the zookeeper needs to hurry home to his missus. We had two Lego guys, and we used Schleich figurines for animals. We picked a gorilla , a lion , an elephant and a giraffe . We do not have a hyena or an armadillo, but we once invited a moose into the game. Everyone wants a chance to sleep in the zookeeper's house. All the characters took their places, and the story began. Budster listened and helped me move everyone around. One night, the zookeeper was taking a stroll... pardon, a ride around the zoo. He wanted to check on all the animals and wish them a goodnight before heading home. But when he stopped next to the gorilla's cage, the little rascal stole his keys and got out. Not only did the gorilla break free, he also decided to help his buddies. First, the gorilla opened a lion's cage... and then it was giraffe's turn! They all followed the zookeeper, as he stopped next to the elephant's cage. And guess what happened after that? They let the elephant out too! In the house, Mrs. Zookeper was dozing off in bed, waiting for her husband to come home. Little did she know how many guests she would have tonight! If you are familiar with the story, you know what happens next. When Mrs. Zookeeper woke up in her Lego bed and saw the gorilla next to her, Budster giggled just the way he does when he sees that page in the book. We enjoy building a Lego zoo, and played this game many times, making more elaborate cages and, of course, modernizing the zookeeper's car! Or "cah-ee", in Budster's language. A funny fact: he is capable of saying this word right and does it most of the time, but when he feels particularly affectionate to his vehicles, he tenderly calls them "cah-ee". What have your children built of Lego recently? We would be happy to see pictures of their creations on our Facebook page. If you want to stay updated on other stories from Adventure in a Box, consider subscribing to our Pinterest or Instagram pages. Thank you for reading!

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Goodnight, Gorilla: Building the Story with Lego

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Over the last month, we saw the beginning of a passionate love that has the potential to last for many years. Budster has fallen in love with Lego. Up until now, Budster's favourite toys have been hammers, brooms, even lemon squeezers, and of course, books and paints.

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Advantage: Different sizes of boxes for children to group the animals according to sizes.
I like the concrete animals with different texture.

Disadvantage: Different colour of shoebox will confuse some children.

Modification: Look for same colour shoeboxes or wrap the shoeboxes with black paper to minimize the confusion.

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Last week we had fun reading Goodnight, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann. This week an area was set up so they could play with the story and retel...

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Advantage: Interactive book that children can move the key/open the door.

Disadvantage: All animals and cages are Black and white colour.

Modification: Make the book colorful so that children are more interested and engage in.

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Who doesn't love Good Night, Gorilla?! It's got to be one of my all-time FAVORITE books! Each page is full of language-rich, engaging artwork that appeals to kids of every age and tells a delightful story using very few words. It's the perfect book to use for building language skills at any level, making it the first book I'll go to now that we've started our zoo theme at Small Talk.

The colorful keys and cages in the book inspired me to make a little book to use with my preschoolers:

Each page of this 6-page book has an animal hiding behind a cage door that opens and closes, and a key that turns to "unlock" it. How fun is that?

After opening all six doors and talking about the animals hiding inside their cages, we say "good night" to each one and lock them up again! The preschoolers love to turn those keys, and the repetitive text makes it easy for them to "read" the story again and again. You can download a copy to use with your kids here. You'll need to print two copies of the cage doors, and one copy of the animal pages. Cut the cage doors with room to spare for gluing on the left edge. The keys are on a separate document; download them here. I used a hole punch to make holes in the keys and on each page, roughly a half an inch from the right edge of the paper, and fastened the keys to the pages using brass fasteners. Some of the kids helped with the assembly of their own books, which was an even better way to expand language.

Another activity I'd like to share is my Zoo Animal Box. I bought a plain brown box from Michael's and decorated it with zoo animal stickers. I filled the box with small plastic animals and made some question cards to go along with them. The cards are pictured below, and ask questions about features. The kids match the animals to a card that best describes them. With some of my kids, we were able to group two or more animals with a similar feature, such as "pointy ears" or "sharp teeth", and talk about

which animal had "the most" spots, or "the longest" tail. In some cases after the child was familiar with the animals and the question pattern, we reversed roles and the child asked me questions. This was a great way to work on formulating questions and using descriptors.

I made a second set of card to use for comparatives and superlatives and a few blank cards for you to be creative with. You can download both sets of cards here. All in all, this was an easy activity to pull together and one that is easy to adapt to address a variety of skills.

I hope you enjoy these activities. I'm sure I'll have more to add as The Small Talk Zoo just opened for business and I usually keep it around for awhile! If you download any of my materials, please leave a comment to let me know how you plan to use them.

Nice chatting with you!

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Good Night, Gorilla and Other Zany Zoo Ideas

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Who doesn't love Good Night, Gorilla?! It's got to be one of my all-time FAVORITE books! Each page is full of language-rich, engaging artwork that appeals to kids of every age and tells a delightful story using very few words.

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Advantage: Big and small animals for children to choose. Easy to make.

Disadvantage: The cage is not locked.

Modification: We can add in the lock. Children can match the key with the lock.

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Advantage: Children can match the colour (key to cage)

Disadvantage: Colour matching is too easy for children.

Modification: We can add in sequencing concept in this resource kit.

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I finally figured out a way to turn Good Night Gorilla into an interactive flannel board story. First, I made each animal that appears in the picture book. I also included the zookeeper, his wife, and their bed. Then, I cut out six different colored cages to go over each animal.

To make this story intereactive for toddlers, I made keys to coordinate with each cage.

I put the keys on a two-inch book ring and tell the children that this is the zookeeper's key ring. Before I tell the story I pass out a different colored key to each child and tell them that the gorilla told me to.

I introduce each animal one at a time and ask the children if they have the correct colored key to let the animal out of their cage. At the end of the story I place them all in the zookeeper's bed and we say good night and blow them kisses.

For more flannel ideas, check out Roving Fiddlehead's blog. Or check out Flannel Friday.

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I finally figured out a way to turn Good Night Gorilla into an interactive flannel board story. First, I made each animal that appears in the picture book. I also included the zookeeper, his wife, and their bed. Then, I cut out six different colored cages to go over each animal.