We have been reading “Ruby’s Beauty Shop” by Rosemary Wells for several sessions with a little boy on the autism spectrum. He loves the book, as many children do, laughing at Ruby making up Max with green eye shadow and her blonde bombshell wig.
Fast forward to this week when I’ve been opening box after box of submissions for our PAL Award and discovering wonderful new products to review. We received “Beauty Belongings” from Hape and suddenly it hit me that it would be a perfect addition to our language lesson, acting out Ruby’s beauty salon. The kit even came in a cute pink suitcase to zip in all the specialty beauty items. My little friend and his buddies in preschool (I have weekly sessions with typical peers in his class) loved the beauty set so much that one girl asked me how she could get it so we took a picture and sent it to her mother! They were putting lipstick on our Max and Ruby dolls, and each other, painting nails, spraying perfume, putting on powder and drawing colors on eyes. Then we decided to make bombshell wigs so we shredded paper towel and got out the markers to make them in yellow, green and pink.
It was a great way to re-tell and extend the story and have some fun with Max and Ruby!
