Activity: Big Ears

When I first found this activity, all I could think about what PSAT's, SAT's, ACT's, and any other kind of standardized test that you can think of. You know, when they have you read a story and the you have to correctly identify the point of the story, and various aspects about it? Yeah... I was never did excell at those kinds of tests, which is interesting because I love to read. But regardless of the tests, this activity is still fun for kids, and could actually make a great party game.

What you are going to do is tell a story with lots of descriptive words. If you don't have a story like this on hand, here is how to write one. If doing it for a birthday party, you could write a story about the birthday kid and do it as one of your games.

Before you begin the story, have the child or children clothes their eyes and focus really hard on listening (use their big ears!). Then tell the story, remind the kids to listen for descriptive words (you may want to explain what a descriptive word is at the start of the activity). Once the story is over, you can do a number of things.

1. Have the kids write down the answers to your questions
2. Draw pictures of the objects that they remember (pink dress, blue eyes, etc)
3. Have the kids try to retell the story (you can have one kid do this, or have kids take turns after a few sentences each)
4. Have costumes and things on hand to act out the story.
5. Have coloring pages for the kids to color correctly (again, pink dress, blue eyes, etc)
6. Whatever else you can think of.

That's about it! I would advise keeping the stories fairly short depending on the age and skill level of your kids. And the more you do it, the more you can add to the stories. You could even grab some library books and then add more descriptive words if you like. OOH! Or how about 

Have you done any thing like this? Do you have a descriptive story to share or recommend?