Please May I have book ideas for group story reading for refugee and migrant to toddlers..

[FLOrenze]

In September I am taking a volunteer post as “Story book Lady” in our children’s. Centre.

This is a mixed group of under 5s and SENs up to 9. If anyone has books that their toddlers love could you let me know. Nothing that is frightening, has monsters or soldiers. Big colourful pictures would be good. Repetitive words, animal sounds and books that. Involve the children in shouting out or making gestures we be good.

If anyone has experience of engaging with groups of toddlers through books, your advice would be invaluable.

When I worked with toddlers with SEND, One Mole Digging a Hole by Julia Donaldson was the absolute favourite. It’s also good for teaching counting and animals in English and has brightly coloured pictures. You could make up animal actions to go with it.

I’d also contact Bookstart and get some packs that they can take home with them to keep. They do specialist packs for children with SEND and visual impairments along with their regular packs.

I think Herve Tullet also did Press Here, which is similarly interactive and fun (but quite long).

Goodnight Gorilla. Very visual. Enjoyed by autistic toddler. Story carried by the pictures.

Dear zoo. Flap book.

See if you can borrow some "big books" from a library.

Lots of traditional tales are very repetitive, Gingerbread Man, Chicken Licken. Three bears

If you can get hold of some animal finger or glove puppets small children love having a puppet to wear ( even when the animal or character isn’t actually in the story).

Nursery rhymes are good too, incel wincey, twinkle twinkle, baa baa black sheep. I think it’s good to finish sessions on a song, it’s a great way for kids to join in even if they aren’t confident enough to speak on their own.

if you can it’s a great idea to have a “prop” bag to dip into so you can introduce a story and some of the vocabulary , “todays story is about Some bears, ,…….. a little girl called Goldilocks, and some bowls of porridge , a big bowl for daddy bear, a middle sized bowl for mummy bear and a little bowl for the baby bear”.

For your audience I think you need really short simple books to be as accessible as possible.
Dear zoo, noisy farm and oh dear by rod campbell are good.
One mole digging a hole and chocolate mousse for greedy goose are lovely.
A busy day for birds is a good one for actions - they can pretend to be a swan stretching it’s neck or a flamingo on one leg etc.
Shark in the park and car car bus jeep by nick sharratt have bright illustrations and a good rhyme (car car bus jeep can be sung to the tune of twinkle twinkle).
Ten little dinosaurs is cute, and good for introducing numbers.

I have an album of nursery rhymes called sing and learn by Vicky arlidge, there’s 3 collections. If you have Apple Music/Spotify I think you can listen for free, our library had them on CD for toddler rhyme time. I’ve found them clearly enunciated compared to some nursery rhyme compilations.

Perhaps you could join a local Facebook group and if anyone is giving away animal toys or soft toys you could build a collection to use as story props. Alternatively I’ve seen people decorate wooden spoons as story characters.

Songs:
Five little ducks
Five little woolly lambs in a field at play
Five bananas on banana tree
Five little snowflakes went round and round,
Two little hands go clap, clap, clap.
Miss Polly had a dolly.

I wonder if you could put a post out on your local Facebook page asking for a knitter/crocheter to make you some finger puppets for nursery rhymes.

When my dc were little they used to have a bag of these (spider, star, fish etc) and the children would take it in turns to take one out of the bag and they'd all do the nursery rhymes. Just thinking that nursery rhymes tend to be short and the children would pick up the actions quickly if not the words.

“Incel wincey”

no, on second thoughts dont include this one, really not suitable!