'Picture a Story'

 

Today's Snack: Give your child a plate, some cut-up fruit, and a small container of chocolate pudding. Encourage your child to make a "picture" in the plate using these supplies. Maybe the child would like to make a face, with the pudding as the "hair" or "moustache" and so forth. Then comes the fun part! Eat the picture! You might relax your rules this once and let your child eat the pudding with his or her fingers. Why not?

 

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10 pieces of paper

Pen, markers, crayons

Photographs or old magazines and catalogs

Child-sized scissors

Gluestick or tape

Stapler

 

           

A picture's worth a thousand words! And with pre-literate children, learning to tell a story without writing any words is still good practice for the real thing!

 

So tell your child that he or she is going to get to "write" a story just by telling it to YOU. Show your child the 10 pieces of paper. Tell the child that the story is going to have a beginning, middle and end, and you have plenty of paper to capture the entire tale.

 

Give your child this "prompt" for the story: "It was a special day for (child's name) because he/she got to ______."

 

Have the child dictate the story to you from beginning to (of course!) a happy ending.

 

Now give your child the scissors and old magazines and catalogs, and , and have the child go through and cut out pictures to illustrate each page. Any pictures that the child can't find, the child can draw, or you can draw and the child will enjoy gluing or taping them in place.

 

Once the book is done, staple it down the left-hand side, and read it to your child!