Mike’s Kite, Making the story active

Submitted by Elli D.

Mike’s Kite is a wonderful book about a boy and his kite.  The wind took the kite and the kite took Mike!  Passers by grab on and are taken too! After a while a snake of people were hanging on to the kite and flying through the air!  When the wind stopped everyone came tumbling down.  As fun as this book is on its own, one day I had asked the kids to help Mike too!  I selected one child to start and as I read the book I would pause to allow the child to call out the next person to “grab on”.  That child would hold onto the waist of the child that called him then I would keep reading the book, as the last child selected would call out the name of another child from circle to “grab on”.  We would continue the book until all the children were “grabbing on”.  I would then say, “The wind blew and it blew then it STOPPED!”  The children would all fall down.  All laughing of course!  This became a very favorite book and was read about 100 times that year and no one ever got bored!

HINT: You can do this with ANY book!  Do a play, actions, give kids puppets to use during the story.  However, make sure the kids know the story well enough first!