Literacy Extension: There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly

Last week during a big book rotation, Tyler rediscovered our "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" book in one of the boxes. It was one of his favorites months ago and it has quickly become so again!

Seeing that we had all of the animals in the book, I figured that I'd create a literacy extension for him. I gathered all of the creatures (we got the spider and fly in the favor section of a party story last year if you're wondering where you may find them) and set them on his homemade ramp (which has been unused for at least a month) so we could work on sequencing the animals. Our version of the book is by Child's Play, which has holes that make it even more fun.

Tyler apparently already knew the order quite well, so my plan was then to create an old lady out of a box or a bag, cutting a large hole for her mouth so that he could put the animals in. 

Tyler, being the fabulous child that he is, decided to cut me a break on creating the old lady, becoming "old Tyler"...and stuffing each animal down his shirt as he goes through the book! The only animal he  won't "swallow" is the horse, as the old lady dies after doing so in the book. Sad to know that he knows about death after our two precious kitties passed away last year, but I think it's rather smart of him!

He then started to chew on the animals before stuffing them (to "swallow")...and chewing rather hard. I admit I was a bit disturbed at first! I should mention that we've also talked about whether or not you could really swallow animals like a cat in real life. We decided you could swallow a spider or a fly and possibly a bird, but certainly none of the others.

That's one lumpy shirt! He goes through the book and stuffs his shirts at least twice a day, often giggling the whole time. The other day we arrived at the library for story time, his coat came off, and we noticed that he had something in his shirt. We were late and story time had already begun so we tried not to laugh too hysterically as we pulled a fly and a bird out of him!

Speaking of our local library and story time, they once used the above product when reading this story. They sell The Old Lady  and the bean filled animals on Amazon for a pretty decent price if you're looking for something more beautiful than a homemade box lady for your child! It looked pretty easy to slip the animals into her mouth and to retrieve them.