Little Mrs. Preschool: Favorite Book Character Day!

Favorite Book Character Day!

We traditionally do not celebrate Halloween in my classroom, but I found a creative way to allow the kiddos to have fun and dress up and still provide a unique educational and family involvement opportunity. I had talked with several other teachers in the building who had tried but failed to get this idea up and running so I wanted to make a change in my classroom.

Here's a few examples of what my cuties dressed up as:

Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz

Little Boy from A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound

Princess from Barbie fairy tale story

Pig from If You Give a Pig a Party

Princess from her favorite Turkish Fairy Tale

Here's how I organized this great day:

For about a month before our celebration I pumped up our families and kiddos up about the upcomgin Favorite Book Character Day!

I talked and talked about what a great opportunity it would be and how much fun the children would have!

Here's an example of a memo I sent home to families explaining the event:

As we have circle time and share books with the children, we talk quite a bit about the many interesting characters we meet, several of whom the children have come to feel they know personally. To celebrate this knowledge and love of reading, we will host a Character Dress-Up Day on October 31, 2013. On that day, each child is asked to come to school dressed as a favorite character from a story they have read.

Here's a little more description I sent them in an email:

We encourage your child to come dressed as their favorite literacy character and share the book the character is in with the class. We hope this opportunity will extend our efforts to help the children find joy in reading and make a nice connection between school and home. No need to buy a costume as this is a opportunity to allow your child to be creative and think of a way to become their favorite character with items you have around your house.

If you need any assistance with ideas please ask us! We will have a box of props/costumes for children as well.

I also sent along this link with some great book character ideas: check it out here.

More of my kiddos as their characters here:

Ballerina Kitty from Ballet Kitty

Ladybug Girl

Clifford


Budgie from Budgie and the Blizzard

Horse and Bear from Brown Bear Brown Bear

The Little Mermaid

Pinkalicious

We put on a Favorite Character Parade around the school and invited families to attend:

Parading around to the other classrooms

Showing off to the ladies in the principal's office

My amazing co-teachers and me: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Pinkalicious, Silly Sally, & Fancy Nancy!

More of how we did this event in the classroom:

In the classroom, each day leading up to the big day we promoted this special event, by having many discussions about characters we like in stories and promoting conversations about their favorite stories and characters in them.

On the day of, after the children checked each other out, they were encouraged to share their characters' stories with each other. We spent time reading the stories and discussing why they wanted to dress up as a character from the book! In circle time, we did a show-and-tell like presentation of their costumes and stories. We also allowed them to keep their costumes on throughout the day (except recess).

We had some back-up costumes ready for kiddos who may not have come in dressed up. However, everyone participated!

To be honest, some parents seemed a little hesitant at first as they were unsure how to fit this into their busy schedules. Yet, once we gave them some simple suggestions they got really excited about it and wanted to participate and help out. Many of them brought in special treats that day and spoke about how much fun they had organizing and planning their character ideas with their child.