Animal Story Props

                                                     Animal Story Props   

                                                  Article Submitted By Jennifer Keenan 

Use story props to enrich your student’s literacy experience.  When creating story props consider the visual, auditory and tactile features that will allow the student to have an expanded literacy experience.  Young learners with visual impairments need to experience literacy in a multi-sensory manner.  Their sighted peers build a background of knowledge by observing experiences visually.  It is important to bring as many “real” items to a student to give them references to call upon when learning new things.

The story props featured here were purchased at a local fabric store.  The duck puppet has a realistic “quack quack” sound and can be recorded on a voice output device or used as a repeating line in a story.

The “Gossie” story prop has a single feather, and red boots.  Sometimes simple adaptations are best.  This prop has great color contrast, and has a tactile feature that lets students easily discriminate a feature to a real goose.