There’s a Tiger in the Garden

The afternoon before Mr H arrived I did a craft activity with Mr D and Miss E based on a new favourite books of ours – the wonderful There’s a Tiger in the Garden by Lizzy Stewart.

The book is all about a little girl who plays in her Grandma’s garden, not believing the creatures that live there, until she of course meets them. Since this book arrived we have read it many times and the children love it.

As I was feeling tired and heavy I set up a very quick activity for the children. We read the book then set about making dragonflies and tigers.

For the dragonflies I got out various crafty items, tissue paper, sequins and the such and drew some very rough dragonflies for the children to decorate. They had great fun adding the bits and pieces to them and decorating them up.

Next we created some paper plate tigers. For this I gave them plenty of orange and black tissue paper and squares of orange card and paper and left them to decorate their plates.

They both set about making them orange first of all before adding the black strips of paper for the tiger’s stripes. They then both added eyes onto the plates.

View this post on Instagram

They really enjoyed making these items and we also followed it up with these split pin tigers and bears – although these were done in the first couple of days after Mr H arrived and I didn’t manage to get pictures.

The book itself is beautiful – it is a lovely tale of imagination and fun and has the most beautiful illustrations. Both the children love this book and it is one they return to time and again, each time picking out different things they spot in the pictures.

I love the discussions we have had after reading this book; Mr D in particular is unsure if the tiger is real or not… and I love that he is at this stage of his comprehension at the moment too where he can ask questions and I can help aid his understanding of the story. The story touches on some lovely philosophical ideas which can be challenging for adults let alone children to consider, but it does so in such a gentle way.

I like to think that the tiger and the grumpy polar bear are really in Grandma’s garden.

If and when the weather brightens up I plan to set up a little hunt for the children in our own garden – I’m going to get a picture of dragonflies, a polar bear and a tiger and make into a jigsaw; hiding the pieces around out garden for them to find; although the way our weather is at the moment that could be some time away!

Save

Save