The purpose of this activity is to make conscious something your child has noticed already: living things change over time. The activity also encourages your child to orally tell a story.
- Take out a photo album of your child as a baby and “read” it together. In no time, your child will be making comments about the length and color of their hair and how much taller they are as time goes by. They will notice clothes that they can no longer wear and toys that were once new that now are “baby” stuff! Be prepared for their observations about you too! “Hey Dad, is that you? You look so thin!”, or “Mom, you really look different with short hair!”
- Possibly you have a pet, and some of the pictures are of your puppy or kitten, now fully grown. Use those pictures, or those of your child, to explore how things grow. Select pictures at various stages (birth, two years old, the present) and use the activity workmats to order the pictures from birth to now.
- Ask your child to find the picture that shows themselves, or your pet, as a baby. Put that picture on mat #1. Next find the most recent picture and place it on mat #3. Ask your child to tell you how they are the same, and how they are different, focusing their attention on the subject of the picture, and not its setting! Finally, put mat #2 between #1 and #3. Tell your child to put the last picture in the middle. Now you have a story to tell!
You most likely will want to model this for your child (#1 – BABY PICTURE This story starts with a picture of a beautiful baby with big brown eyes named Sarah. She was always smiling and she loved to wave her little arms in the air. #2 – BLOWING OUT CANDLES Each day she got bigger and bigger until one day she had her birthday. In this picture she is two years old with beautiful long brown hair. She was so strong that she can blow out all of her candles at the same time! When she was a baby she sat on the table, but now she can kneel on the chair to reach her birthday cake. #3 – RIDING A BIKE Look at Sarah now: her hair is still brown, but it’s cut short, she has big hands that hold on tightly to the handlebars of her bike, her legs are long and strong as she pedals down the sidewalk. She is a big girl now!)
- Pick out three other pictures and repeat the process above, this time letting your child tell the story.
- While you are looking at the pictures together, make note of the vocabulary you are using and keep a list of the comparative words you and your child say when making your observations. You can keep a list of these words on the refrigerator and use them whenever you are playing a game about things that are different and things that are the same.
