Tell Me A Story

Looking for a great way to nurture your child's language skills and creativity?
Make a picture book.

It's simple. Have your child cut out pictures from a magazine and glue them in a homemade booklet. (I trimmed the paper down because Bear likes small books, folded the pages and stapled them.)
Now start storytelling.

One of our stories goes like this:
This is the story of Ella (picture of a little girl). And her friend Cindy's dog Muffy (picture of a dog). Ella put on her hat, socks, shoes, and sunglasses, and grabbed her sippy cup because she was going on an outing (picture of shoe, socks, hat, sunglasses, and sippy cup).
The story goes on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Bear loves these booklets (we have three so far) and wants me to "read" them to her over and over.
Now that I've modeled three, Bear will get to tell the story of our fourth booklet.


Why this activity is important:

• your child practices cutting and glueing, two very important skills.
• participation in the making of the book creates ownership of the story.
• modeling by telling the story to your child encourages story telling components of beginning, middle, and end, problem and solution.
• the fact that there are no words allows for embellishments and for the story to grow a bit at each telling.
  
• It's prereading and prewriting practice, especially once the child is the one telling the story.

Click on the picture for more learning through love activities.