Wombat Stew

Do you bring your stories to life?  We do!
Lately we have taken this to another level.
This is how we bought Wombat Stew to life using pretend play & a little imagination.



Wombat Stew



Reading is much more interesting and intriguing to children when you use exciting faces, character voices and engage them in the process.  Pointing to the words as reading them, discussing what they think will happen or for older children, getting them to fill in the blanks. I do this often with Dimples, reading a familiar sentence then pointing to the last word and pausing so he can finish it.


Our new thing though, is playing out stories through dress ups or pretend play.  We did this with The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, one of our favourites.  One of Dimples other favourites is "Wombat Stew" By Marcia Vaughan and Pamela Lofts.
Have you heard of it? I think it is an Australian Classic. Well written, great illustrations, up beat, fun, educational and it rhymes. Dimples sings along to the dingos chant and gets right into it, he finds the ending hilarious every time.



We bought this story alive by making our very own wombat stew, Dimples was the Dingo and had a big fat wombat reading to stew up. I gave him some blue cellophane that he cut up and put in a large laundry tub,  I mean into the bubbling billy. We collected some Mud from the Platypus, Some feathers for the Emu, Some Plastic flies from the Blue tongue Lizard, Plastic creepy crawlies from the Echidna, and Real Gum nuts from the Koala.



 

All our ingredients were placed out on Dimples table and he got his stuffed toys ready. He had most of them but his echidna was missing in action. We spent all morning looking for it, it didn't turn up until later that day when we weren't looking, I found it hidden in a jacket in my wardrobe, go figure!


Dimples sat his fat wombat ready as he stirred the billy and chanted "righto, in  they go!" along with the story as he put in the ingredients.  All the while the kookaburra sat by and watched, just like in the illustrations.


It was funny to see Dimples get right into it and act like the dingo, his eyes lite up as waited for me to read the next part of the story, of course he already knew which ingredient was going to be next but waited patiently stirring the billy.



At the ending Dimples tasted his stew, not really, but he went to the extent of getting mud on his face. " Argowwwwwwwwweeeeee, I've been poisoned, You've tricked me!" He screamed and then ran off, hands waving in the air and his tongue poking out. Never again to sing - " Wombat stew, Wombat Stew, Gooey, Brewy, Yummy, Chewy, Wombat Stew!"
It was awesome fun and he played with his Wombat Brew for a while after chatting away to himself. I'd here the occasional "righto in they go!" as he inspected the ingredients.

Happy Adventures :)