Have a Candy Corn Retelling

In first grade, your child is doing more than just learning how to string letters to form words and sentences; he's also learning about basic story structures—how stories have settings and characters and how stories take the reader from the beginning to the middle to the end.

One way to help your child improve his understanding of story structure is to have him retell a story. In a retelling, a child shares what he remembers and understands about a story. He recalls story events and describes what happened in sequence from beginning to end. In this activity, encourage your child to practice retelling the beginning, middle, and end of a story by using candy corn and foam to make retelling simple, sweet, and fun.

What You Need:

• A fun, seasonal book to read aloud to your child
• Craft foam in yellow, orange, and white
• A piece of cardboard backing
• Self-adhesive Velcro
• Scissors
• Black marker
• Candy corn

What to Do:

1. Cut three pieces of craft foam to form a piece of candy corn. Make the bottom piece yellow, the middle orange, and the top white. Assemble the candy corn pieces on the cardboard, and attach each piece of foam to the cardboard with a piece of Velcro.
2. Trace around the candy corn with the marker so that when you pull the three foam pieces away, you have the an outline of the candy corn.
3. Read the book aloud to your child.
4. At the end, have him re-tell the main events of the story back to you. As he describes the beginning, have him place the bottom piece of craft foam (the yellow piece) on the cardboard. Offer him a piece of real candy corn for every detail he can remember about the beginning of the story. Prompt his memory with simple questions if needed.
5. Repeat for the middle and end of the story, attaching the foam pieces to the board for each part of the story until the candy corn is complete.
6. Congratulate him on his “sweet retelling", then enjoy a snack of candy corn!