Dear families,

In James and the Giant Peach, James receives a white paper bag of “green things” that are luminous, small, strange, magical, and thousands in number! The children got to interact with a prop that brought the written description to life. This experience was designed to hit many goals:

spark wonderment in reading and continue a love for stories
attach a memorable event to the concept of adjectives for better recall
show children that effective adjectives can create pictures and make it easy to imagine
inspire use of adjectives in speech and writing

When you read aloud a story at home, see if you can act out or create a moment or item from the story. Highlight how you knew to do something a certain way or make something look like this because of the adjectives and adverbs that the author used. Doing this at home now or during the summer or any time after will be an excellent way to:

attach fun memories and love of their family to exploring literacy
show that their parents are life long learners exploring reading with them
instill habits and love of reading outside of school, making it clear it is a fun thing!
reinforce understanding of parts of speech for better memory recall later
see what your child is thinking and learning!

I hope you enjoy this activity. We took pictures with the green things bag for fun. Here they are!