Author: Julia Donaldson
With Halloween just around the corner it felt like the perfect time to focus on Room On The Broom. This beautifully illustrated book is a firm family-favourite and tells the wonderful story of a witch, her cat and some friends they meet along the way.
Here are my top Room On The Broom activities you can do with your child to help support his/her speech & language development:
1. Due to the number of rhyming words in this story it makes it the perfect opportunity to work on your child’s awareness of rhyming words. When you initially read the book, you can place an emphasis on the rhyming words on each page.
For example, on the first page you could say:
“But how the witch wailed
and how the cat spat,
When the wind blew so wildly,
it blew off her hat.
On your second and third readings of the story you can point out the rhyming words as you come across them e.g. “Listen. ‘hat’ sounds like ‘spat’. ‘hat’ and ‘spat’ rhyme. The end of the words sound the same”.
I’ve made a rhyming game for you to play with your child based on the words in the book. Print the FREE resource below and cut up the pictures. Encourage your child to find the words that rhyme. You can explain to them that you are looking for words that sound the same at the end, but remind them that these words might not be spelt the same.
When your child is consistently able to recognise the rhyming words in the story you can then encourage him or her to come up with a word. You can say “Can you think of another word that rhymes with ‘frog’ and ‘dog’?”.
2. Due to the clear sequence of events throughout this story it makes it the perfect story to work on your child’s narrative/story telling skills.
Encourage your child to tell you what happened in the story focusing on the following elements:
- who?
- What doing?
- What?
- Where?
I’ve included some FREE pictures that you can use to remind your child of elements from the story.
3. Room On The Broom have produced this lovely colouring activity for you to do with your child. You can turn this into a language activity by printing a copy for both you and your child and giving each other instructions to follow e.g. “colour the witch’s hat red” “colour the broom and the cat”. This will support your child to follow instructions containing multiple steps
You should also check out Room On The Broom where you will find more activities and fun worksheets you can do with your child!
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