The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark – Literacy Activities

This is a well known and well loved story about a baby owl who seeks help to overcome his fear of the dark.  Find a link to the story here You Tube – The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark.

The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark – Teacher Resources page will take you to Teacher Support Notes for Literacy lessons, an IDL topic mind map and activities to support learning in all 8 areas of the curriculum.

Watch the video and try out some of these Literacy activities.

Recall, Sequence and Retell the Story

CfE Es and Os  LIT 0-01c and  LIT 0-07a / LIT 0-16a /
E NG 0-17a

Being able to recall (remember) and retell a story is a big part of the fun in sharing a book together.

With your child, divide up the story so that you each have a minimum of 2 chapters each to illustrate.

Lay your illustrations out on the floor or use pegs to hang them from a small washing line. Can you put them in the same order that each part of the story appears in the book?

There are 7 chapters in all.  Once your child is confident about sequencing the story, can you illustrate all 7 chapters ?  Are there parts of the story that don’t show up in your illustrations?  Where would they fit in the sequence?

 Go Exploring and Collect Textures

CfE Es and Os  Listening and Talking LIT 0-09a and  Writing LIT 0-21b

This activity is designed to create conversations about we are experiencing and exploring ways to record what we have discovered.

The setting for the story is the parks and gardens around Plop’s home.  Explore your own local park or garden and pay special attention to the textures you find.  Look for smooth and rough surfaces.  Can you find anything that is hard or something spongy, soft? It might be possible to collect small items (leaves, feathers or sticks for example).

Another way to collect textures is to press modelling clay or play dough on to a surface.  Lift it off carefully and you will see an imprint of the texture you have ‘collected’.  Talk about how the imprint feels under your fingers using as many descriptive words as you can.

Making wax crayon rubbings of a surface allows you to speak about what the surface feels like and what that texture looks like in 2D.

Find out how to make wax rubbings at  OPAL Bark Art

Game – ‘The creature I am thinking of is…..’

CfE Es and Os  Talking and Listening LIT 10a

Plop is described as fat, fluffy, soft and perfect.  Out loud, describe another night time creature but don’t name the creature!

Example ‘The creature I am thinking of is …. brown, spikey and has a long nose.  What is it?’  Answer: A hedgehog.

Begin by describing creatures from the book and then move on to other creatures, people, living things you may have come across outdoors.