Move Mountain 
The Mouse and his Three Friends 
The Bridge 
A Friend for Mole 
The Cow That Laid an Egg 
Giraffe Problems 
Filo and Super Phil 
A Story of a Dot on a White Notebook 
Soumsoum the Mouse (Al-far Soumsoum) 
فعاليات متنوّعة
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Let’s talk...
About desires and wishes: Mountain wanted to see the sun, but he couldn’t. We can talk to our child about the things they want and desire: which things can they have, and which are hard for them to get? How do they feel? We can think together and suggest different ways to fulfill our desires.
Feelings: We can follow the drawings with our children and talk about the various feelings of Mountain and his friends. We can name them and ask the children about their causes, such as: feelings of frustration when he could not see the sun; feeling excited; Sympathy from friends. We can connect feelings to their effect on our behavior.
Solving problems: Mountain’s friends tried to deal with his problem by suggesting several solutions. We can talk with our children about the solutions that his friends have suggested and offer others that they have not. We can train our children to be flexible, creative outside-the-box thinkers.
Helping and Cooperating: Mountain’s friends sympathized with him and tried to fulfill his desire to see the sun. We can ask our children: Did anyone help them get something they wanted? Then we can also ask: Who supported them? How did they feel?
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Let’s play and imagine...
We can choose an object, think outside the box, and suggest many uses for it beyond the well-known traditional use.
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Let’s act and innovate...
We can train our children to think flexibly by suggesting issues and problems that our child faces in daily life and searching for and acting out many solutions.
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Let’s explore...
We can go out to nature with the family to observe the mountains and witness their beauty and the life of the creatures living there.
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Together, you can...
Together, you can discuss what the crow, the turtle, and the mouse each did to save the deer from the trap. Could the deer have been saved without their cooperation?
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Recall an incident...
Recall an incident at home or in your neighborhood where people cooperated to help someone. What did each one do? In addition, what did our child do? It is time to talk about the role of every one, even if it is a small role.
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The story starts...
The story starts with an illustration of the friends playing chess. Maybe it can encourage us to play chess with our child.
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How about a theater...
How about a theater show of the mouse and his three friends? We can make masks of each character and play the story. Who will play the hunter role?
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Hunting deer...
Hunting deer is illegal in our country because deer is an endangered species. It is time to talk about hunting wild animals. Why do some people would want to hunt? Maybe we can learn about endangered species with our children and what animals it is illegal to hunt in different parts of the world.
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What do you think...
What do you think the new adventure of the three friends will be the next day? We can encourage our child to use his/her imagination and make up a story about another adventure the three friends might have.
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Look through the...
Look through the book together and examine the unusual illustrations that accompany the text. Notice the various perspectives the illustrator used in creating these pictures. Which pictures show the action from above—and which from the side? Talk with your children and ask them why they think the illustrator chose to portray the events on the bridge as she did.
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Sometimes, before we...
Sometimes, before we arrive at a good idea, we first have to try (and discard) some not-so-good ideas. Together with your children, go back over the various solutions which the bear and the giant proposed in the story. What are the upsides and downsides of each idea?
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Do you remember...
Do you remember the game of “Golden bridge”? Stand opposite your child and hold both his hand high to form a bridge. Invite other family members and friends to pass under the bridge, while singing: “Oh Golden bridge, Oh golden bridge/ we all pass under you and someone will be caught”. Whoever is passing the minute you say “caught” is out.
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Let’s have a conversation...
Let’s have a conversation about feelings: We can follow the feelings of the mole and the wolf with our children. We can name them and discuss the reasons for why they felt this way.
Let’s have a conversation about personal space: Mole liked his personal space. He loved his house, his bed, the smell of dirt and the darkness around him. We can ask our children about their favourite place/corner: Why did they choose it? What do they like to do on their own?
Let’s have a conversation about dealing with problems and overcoming fear: The mole and the wolf were lost and strayed away from their homes, but they were able to support each other and return safely. We can discuss the following with our children: How do we feel when we are lost? And how should we act? We can listen to them and direct them on how to act.
Let’s have a conversation about the formation of friendship: The mole and the wolf are two different animals, but they were able to become friends when they felt and supported each other. We can ask our children: How do the mole and the wolf resemble their friends and how are you different from them? What does it mean to feel the other or sympathize with him? How did the mole and the wolf support each other, and how did they become friends? Have they ever felt sympathy for their friend, or has someone supported them and become their friend?
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Let’s act...
Let’s act getting Lost: We give our children a similar scenario that the mole and the wolf faced, and we act out how we would act if we got lost. We can take turns with our children, give them a model to deal with the problem, and talk to them about it.
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Let’s enrich our language...
Let’s enrich our language The story is rich in vocabulary such as: humming; heaped, dazzle, horizons; etc. We can explain them to our children before reading and immediately after reading them in the text.
Mental and emotional dictionary: the story contains mental vocabulary, such as: imagination; decided; realized; fake/unreal. It contains emotional vocabulary, such as: poetry; in love; amazed; fear; feeling reassured and confident. It is important that our child acquire these new words and can use them in their daily life to describe and express emotional states and ideas, and to facilitate their use during dialogue.
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Let’s play together...
Let’s use a blindfold: The wolf and the mole played in the dark and had fun. We can blindfold ourselves and play a game where we search for our children when blindfolded while our children try to escape from us.
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Let’s explore...
Let’s explore Mole’s Life: The mole is a special animal that lives underground. We can search with our children for information on the Internet or encyclopaedia about it (you can explore other animals featured in the story as well).
The Blind: We can suggest to our children to put themselves in a blind person’s shoes, to sympathize with them and describe their feelings and the challenges they face.
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Let’s communicate...
We invite our child’s friends to visit our home, and we contribute to strengthening our child’s social relationships.
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We can discuss...
About the title: We can discuss the title of the story “The Cow that Laid an Egg,” and we can ask the children: Does the cow lay eggs?
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We can ask...
About the concept of the unique and the special: We can ask the children: What is meant by unique and special? What are things that are common and normal? What are the special things that distinguish us and that we do differently? When do we feel special? Has anyone given us that feeling? Do we do things that make others feel special?
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About trickery...
About trickery: The chickens used a trick to support the cow. What is the trick? Why did the chickens use it? What did the characters in the story think about it, and how did each of them feel? We can follow the drawings and talk about them. We can ask the children: Did they ever use a trick? How? Why? How did they feel?
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A Fun night...
“A Fun night” – we can arrange a family session, grab a book of jokes, laugh and have fun together. We can also come up with some funny jokes and stories.
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We can write...
We can write a funny book adapting the collage style by using newspaper clippings and colors to create funny scenes, such as sticking a chicken’s head on a cat’s body – for example.
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We can browse...
We can browse the encyclopedia, or the Internet, and search for different animal species and how they breed.
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We can look...
We can look for videos showing the stages of egg hatching. We can watch it and talk about it with the kids.
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We can chat...
We can chat about how Edward the giraffe feels about his neck. Why did he feel like this? What helped him accept his neck and see its benefit?
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We can think...
What do we like about animals? We can think of different animals, and take turns completing this sentence: What I love about the elephant/the dog/the ant is…because…
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We can talk...
We can talk to our child about the qualities they do not like and that bother them about themselves. It is important to support the child in seeing what these characteristics allow (for example: being small in size enables them to enter confined spaces). We can also talk about other qualities that they love about themselves.
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Turtle helped Edward...
Turtle helped Edward the giraffe to love his neck. Which friend makes us feel loved? Which friend makes us feel happy?
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We can look...
We can look in the mirror and describe what we see: short straight hair/wide brown eyes…
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Edward is in...
Edward is in our house! We can create a model for Edward’s neck from a long cardboard cylinder, and search our wardrobes for different ties that we can we can wrap around it.
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Super Phil can...
Super Phil can fly in the sky, Aunt Zelda is a brilliant seamstress, and Filo is brilliant in devising tricks. We talk about the things that our child does brilliantly and that make him “super”.
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We imagine that...
We imagine that the two elephants come across a herd of giraffes, or a group of bears, or frogs in the puddle. Which tricks may Filo devise to bypass the animals?
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We think about...
We think about why illustrator drew Filo and Aunt Zelda in different colors while he drew the other elephants in gray.
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A family workshop...
A family workshop to design fashion that makes us with superpowers! We need old clothes, fabric dyes, and some small pieces for decoration like buttons, feathers, shiny fabrics, etc.
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With a child...
With a child, we can follow the dot’s “trip” on a piece of paper, and connect it to other dot that create shapes; we can play with the shapes to build house and human beings
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We can draw...
We can draw or stick several dots on paper, and ask our child to connect between them. Then, we can ask whether the dot could create such shapes if it stayed alone. We can have a conversation with the child about the importance of cooperation at home and at the kindergarten.
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We can look...
We can look for items at home or outside that are made of lines, circles, and squares – a carpet or the borders of a yard. We can catch the child navigate the child around as if he/she were a train among these different shaped items and ask him to call out what shapes we are passing (circle, square, triangle). We can also look for small shapes at home among the child’s games that have simple geometrical shapes.
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Build and dismantle...
Build and dismantle! We can use cotton wool tips (the kind we clean our ears) to build unlimited number of shapes.
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We can cut...
We can cut out squares, circles, triangles and rectangles, and ask the child to build shapes
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We can draw...
We can draw on a paper a simple shape (such as a circle, a square, a straight line etc…) and ask the child to imagine the things we can create from these shapes. We can have a conversation about what shapes are need to build an item the child thinks of, and help him/her to draw it.
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Baked shapes...
Baked shapes! All we need is to prepare some cookie dough, create shapes, and add some sweets to decorate them. Enjoy!
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We can browse...
We can browse the book with our child and look at its drawings. We can talk about what the drawings tell us about how each mouse prepares for winter. We can then search for our friend, “Soumsoum.” Is his drawing different from the drawings of his companions? How?
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Mice store grain...
Mice store grain and straw for the winter days, and Soumsoum stores the colors and scents of summer. We can have a conversation with our children about our preparations for the approaching winter: What do we store in our homes and what do we prepare? We can also talk about our preparations as a family when we have a project together, such as going on vacation.
