Authors: Janet & Allan Ahlberg
This wonderful Christmas book would make the perfect present for your child this festive season. It tells the story of the Jolly Postman, as he makes his way down a windy road, delivering Christmas cards and presents to everyone from Humpty Dumpty to Mr. & Mrs. Clause!
Here are my top The Jolly Christmas Postman activities you can do with your child to help support his/her speech & language development:
1. This book provides wonderful opportunities to support your child’s attention and engagement due to the exciting surprises waiting inside! Your child will turn each page in anticipation to see the next page holds. With letters, postcards, jigsaws and newsletters to find, this is sure to be a family favourite book!
2. 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:
“The Jolly Postman waves bye-bye; he still has far to go. The sun has vanished from the sky, The clouds are hanging low.”
On your second and third readings of the story you can point out the rhyming words as you come across them e.g. “Listen. “four” sounds like “door”. They rhyme. The end of the words sound the same”.
Encourage your child to find the words that rhyme in the story. 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 their own words. You can say “Can you think of another word that rhymes with mile and while?”.
3. Make a map with your child covering the Jolly Postman’s route and highlight all the houses he stopped at along the way. You can use this to support your child’s narrative development, by working on their sequencing and retelling skills.
4. If you have older children you can encourage them to write postcards/ letters to some of the characters from the story. This will support their imagination and writing skills.