Ho, ho, ho! Here comes your child pretending to be Santa Claus with this fun preschool Santa role playing game inspired by the book Here Comes Santa Cat.
Explain to your child this is a make believe game in which they get to star as Santa Claus. The idea is for them to find some toys, put them in a bag, and deliver them in time for the holidays. To make sure your child is at ease, make sure he or she knows this is all pretend and they don’t really have to give their toys away. Then have your child review the image above and explain the activity to you. Follow their lead. As they become more familiar with the game, you could express certain characteristics or functions you like about toys and encourage your child to match the toy delivery to your interests. For example, you could later say: “I love toys that are green,” or “I love toys that move,” or even more specifically: “I love green pull-back toys.”
Here are the four steps illustrated above:
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Find some toys for pretend gifting.
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Put the toys into a bag.
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Say “ho, ho, ho,” just like Santa does, and go deliver gifts for the holidays.
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Pretend to give the gift to the person.
Here are some book-based talking points:
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What was your favorite part of the book? Why?
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Why was Cat dressed like Santa at first?
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What types of things does Cat do to try to improve his niceness score?
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Do his actions improve his score?
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What happens that makes Cat “nicer?”
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Have you ever done something to improve yourself in some way?
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What did you do?
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Did it work?
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What gave you the idea to work on it?
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Is there anything in this book that you’d like to talk about?
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Is there anything in this book that you didn’t understand?
