Book Play

Your Child Will Learn

Retell a story from a favorite book through dramatic performance

Ask your child to select a book that they enjoy reading. Read the book together and discuss the characters and settings, and important parts of the story.
Ask your child to retell this story through a short play performance. Assign parts to family members (or use stuffed animals and dolls as puppets if you don’t have enough people for the play). If you’d like, find costumes and props to help tell the story. You can set up a “stage” and “audience” (toys) too.
Perform the book as a play. Allow your child to take the lead in retelling the story. If they need help remembering details, you (or your character!) can prompt them.
Take a bow and applaud each other’s performances.

PAUSE

Look at each other’s faces and take turns copying each other’s facial expressions. Now you’re ready to be actors!

ENGAGE

“This page is a very important part of the story, we’ll have to remember to act this out in our play.”
“What character from the book do you want to be? Can I be the superhero?”

ENCOURAGE

Prompt your child if they need help remembering the next part of story. You can do it in character, like “Excuse me, Dragon, isn’t it time to go rescue the princess from the tower?”
Compliment your child’s acting and story-remembering skills!

REFLECT

After the performance, ask your child what they liked or didn’t like about acting.

Instead of putting on a play, ask your child to retell you a story from a book. See how much they can remember on their own!

Ask your child to extend the story, and perform a play about what happens after the book ends.

They will be able to retell stories from books they read with supporting details.

20-30 minutes

A picture book, (optional) props and costumes