Over, Under, Around, and Through with Hairy Maclary's Bone

The girls love to mix literature with dramatic play.  One of our favorite stories for this is Hairy Maclary's Bone by Lynley Dodd.  I randomly stumbled upon her books while surfing Amazon - they are very popular in New Zealand and the UK.  We have a number of other books in her series, which follow the adventures of a little terrier, and they are all really cute.

The plot of the book is that Hairy Maclary gets a bone, and all the other neighborhood dogs follow him around.  The dogs go through a sign, under a hedge, around a boat yard, over a hill, and jump over a wall.  In each activity one dog gets left behind until Hairy Maclary gets to go home with the bone all by himself.  This book lends itself to a great discussion on words such as over, under, around, and through.  After reading each section, we demonstrate the action.  The girls navigate through some chairs, commando-crawl under the table, climb over the couch, run around the room, and jump off a stepstool...  basically turning our living room into a giant obstacle course!  We've been doing this activity a lot in the winter when it's too cold to go to the playground.  Here are some pictures of the fun:

Through.

 Under.

 Over.

Getting ready to jump.

Easy.  Physical.  Fun.

Linking to It's Playtime linky: