Bring the child to a comfortable, quiet location and tell a story to kids using Beanie Babies as the main characters. After the story, ask a child to create a story board using the Beanie Babies to demonstrate his comprehension of the tale. Depending on the age of the child, require at least four to six story board squares, each containing a drawing of the Beanie character, setting and plot in enough detail to represent that event in the story. The story board sequence should highlight main points to the original story and give you a means of assessing the child's overall understanding the story.
Select a Beanie Baby and assign it a method of checking for reading comprehension. For example, the rat Beanie might be "Ralph the Retelling Rat" or "Sammy the Story Board Snake." Make a label for this Beanie Baby and place it on a child's desk. Give them any story to read and, depending on the Beanie Baby they receive, ask them to demonstrate their comprehension of the story using that Beanie Baby's comprehension method.
Using the Ty Warner Collector website, read the history of Ty and his Beanie Babies to the child or allow her to read it on her own, depending on her reading level. Pass out three sentence strips and ask the child to write one fact about the history of Beanie Babies on each of the three sentence strips. This activity demonstrates the child's ability to comprehend important facts from an informational piece of text.
Ask the child to develop a list of reading comprehension strategies. Ideas might include looking at the pictures for context clues or considering the author's purpose. Provide the child with various Beanie Babies, each of which have a different reading difficulty. For example, one Beanie might not be able to recall events from a story. Have the child develop and teach a lesson to this Beanie suggesting strategies to help it read more effectively. Doing so reinforces this important reading idea to the child teaching it. Monitor the child teaching the lesson and suggest any additional strategies from which the Beanie Baby might benefit.