Children love stories.
How wonderful to be able to enter the world of make-believe through the pages in a book. However, there are many other creative and exciting ways to tell a story. I hope these ideas with ignite your imaginations and make story time even more fun in your family.
Act It Out.
Take your child's favourite book and 'become' the story. Pretend to be the characters in the story, use silly voices, dress up and have fun! The entire family will love to join in or you can always use teddy bears or dolls instead if you are short on actors! Children love bubbles, so use them at every opportunity! They are great for pretending to be in a snowstorm during 'A Bear Hunt'!
Story Bags.
Fill a bag with toys and everyday objects. Take it in turns to pick an object out of the bag and create a story using the items as your inspiration. The story will never be the same twice and the results can be very funny! Story bags are great for taking out and about to keep little ones entertained. Older children will enjoy telling the stories whilst younger children may need help in creating a story with the objects they chose.
Nursery Rhymes.
All nursery rhymes and songs tell a story. Many have actions to help act them out but we can get even more creative with them! Go outside and find a drainpipe for Incy Wincy to climb up, find a hill to be the Grand Old Duke of York and march your men up and down the hill or sing Twinkle Twinkle under the night sky and see if you can find the most twinkly stars! Ignite those little imaginations and bring the rhymes to life!
Story-telling hunt.
'The Hungry Caterpillar' works great as a story-telling hunt. Use play food, real food or cut out pictures of everything the caterpillar eats and hide them in the house or the garden. As you tell the story, hunt for the food along the way. To finish the story, put on some music and pretend to be a beautiful butterfly.
This also works brilliantly with 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt'. Create obstacles to be the long wavy grass, deep cold river and dark gloomy tunnel. They will love it even more if you actually end up in bed hiding from the bear at the end of the story!
Get Crafty
Make some props that can be used in your story telling. Use play dough to make the characters in the Gruffalo, use lego or duplo to build the brick house for the 3 little pigs and get messy with porridge to explore the story of Goldilocks!
Have fun!