Hearing paying attention and being able to act on what we hear are different things. Here’s a little activity that will encourage listening, paying close attention to details and requires immediate reaction with fine motor skills.
What you need:
Each child should have a big piece of paper, colour pencils and space
What to do:
Dictate a story about an alien that you saw outside the house. Here’s one that I have used before.
Remember to alter the vocabulary in the story to suit the age of the child. Preschool children need simple direct descriptions and older children will benefit from more detailed even hidden description like ‘the creature reached out with its two long arms and tried to grasp a mango off the tree but its scissor like claws just cut the branches as it moved. It never did manage to hold anything.’
Now after you tell the story, have a look at the picture. You may need to reread the story so that they can check the details again. It is a fun project and to help with learning to listen to details. This also helps with math word problems since many children can do the calculations but fail to listen to the words in the problem.
The Alien
You just wouldn’t believe what I saw on my way home today! I was walking down the road and a space ship appeared in the sky. Then I saw a strange looking creature come out of the big red doors on the side.
This creature had a very round body like a gigantic basketball. On the top were three long necks. Each neck had a head but the heads were different.
The centre head was egg shaped with a tuft of yellow furry hair on top. The three round eyes on this head were in a row and it didn’t seem to have a nose. The mouth was big with rows of sharp teeth.
The head on the left was square and not as big as the centre head. It had a trunk like nose with no mouth that I could see. It had two square eyes. One was blue and one was green. This head had a few thick strands of long purple hair which looked like 4 pieces of thick purple rope just hanging down, 2 from each side. And its ears, there were two on each side and all of them pointed up to the sky.
The third head looked more normal like ours. Two eyes two ears a nose in the centre quite normal looking and a mouth but when it opened its mouth, it had a tongue like a snake that was forked and that tongue was red like a tomato. This one had short flaming red hair that all stuck out.
The two arms on the body were long and could almost touch the ground. The two legs were short and skinny. I just don’t know how it stood there without falling over. And the feet. Oh my, the feet were huge with only two toes on each foot.
I am not sure if I have ever run faster in my life. But I got out of there pretty quick.
