Child's Play

How To Use: COVERED IN ADVENTURES

Discussion prompts

Here are some ideas for things to talk about while sharing the book - you could ask a few different questions each time you read it.

On the ‘It’s covered in adventures!’ page, each stain is labelled with an icon. After reading the book, you could go back and try to remember the details of each adventure, e.g. “The tomato sauce is from a cooking adventure Sasha had with her dads”. If you have a particularly good memory, see if you can remember which order the memories are recounted in!

Sasha and Dad Toby wear goggles while carrying out a volcano experiment - you could point out the importance of safety equipment.

What ingredients can you see in the cooking scene? What meal do you think the family is making?

Can you spot Sasha’s pet? It makes a few appearances in the book. What would you name it?

Do you think that Sasha keeps her old top at the end of the book?

Which adventure looks the most fun to you? Why did you choose that one?

Do you have a favourite item of clothing? What do you like about it?

Activities

Sticky Sweaters

Draw a simple sweater shape on a piece of paper. Make sure the arms are long, so you have plenty of space to work with!

Use pens, paint and collage materials to add stains and scuffs to the template.

You could either base the stains on a recent school trip, event or day out, or you could pretend it’s Sasha’s new sweater and come up with some new adventures and their messy results!

Depending on writing level, the stains can be labelled with sentences, key words or simple pictures.

If you’re in a classroom, you could hang the jumpers upon a line with clothes pegs or even make a giant sweater for the wall!

Scrapbooking, Diaries and Other Records

Talk about ways we record happy memories; many people keep journals, store flat souvenirs in scrapbooks, fill photo albums (digitally or physically) and record videos of events on devices.

Scrapbooking is a fun way of recording adventures! Why not make your own?

• Any blank book can be used as a scrapbook but you can often find ones that have been specially designed for scrapbooking in craft shops.

• You can fill the book with printed photos, tickets, postcards and maps. Don’t forget to include some notes to help you remember the best moments.

• The pages can also be personalised with doodles, stickers and ink stamps.

• You could store your scrapbook in a safe place and set a reminder to look through it after a year or more.