Bring Children’s Stories to Life

by Kathy Stemke, Contributing Editor

Young children learn by reading books and participating in experimentation and play. Books increase their vocabulary and understanding about many exciting subjects. Reading opens up new worlds and cultures to them. It can also enhance their social skills. Reading print books improves their eye-hand coordination as they turn the pages, and e-books teach them computer skills. Most of all, reading is a source of good, wholesome fun! Our job, as parents and teachers, is to bring books to life, and give children opportunities to experience the lifelong pleasure of reading. Try some of the following activities with your children to bring their stories to life.

Make a book of your favorite story characters with drawings. It might be fun to cut out figures and use crayons for their clothing and details. Make a colorful timeline of your favorite story.

Create sock or paper bag puppets of your favorite characters and put on a puppet show. You could even extend the story to show what happens next.

You and your friends dress up like your favorite book characters, and have a tea party. What would Snow White say to Amelia Bedelia?

Make a character mobile for your room. You can criss-cross two metal hangers and use string to hang your characters on. You could even use lightweight real objects or felt objects to represent the book.

Sculpt your favorite children’s story character from soap, clay or paper mache.

Build a diorama of a scene from the story. Use a shoebox, smaller boxes, pieces of wood, magazine pictures, construction paper, crayons, paint, cotton, grass, twigs, toilet paper rolls, and anything else you can find to make the needed objects.

Create your own website or blog about your favorite story and characters.

Draw a fancy family tree with your favorite characters and their relatives real or imagined. You can add a line or two about their personalities.

Use scraps of material to design costumes of the characters in your favorite story and put on a play or dance concert for the neighborhood.

Write a poem about your favorite character. Have your favorite character write his or her own poem.

Make a rhyming book. Staple some pages together to make your own book. Pick out an object from your favorite story to draw on each page. Roll one die to see how many rhyming words you need to add for each page. Foe example, if you draw a cat, write hat, mat, bat, fat, sat, and rat under it. (Kids can read their own book over and over again.)

Have family members each read a different character’s lines using appropriate voices. One person needs to be the narrator. Have one person make sound effects during a reading. (wind, rain, bells, barking, crashing noises, crying, doors closing, etc)

Start a kid’s book club with your friends. This website will take you through the process.

Make a snack or meal that your story character would eat. If your reading a story about pigs, make pig head cookies with pink icing, pink marshmallows, and M & M’s for eyes.

Make stick puppets and put on a shadow play of the story. In other words, use a strong flashlight, create shadows on the wall with your puppets, and act out the story.

Design masks for each character from paper plates and have a parade.

Gather your stuffed animals and superheroes on your bed and read a bedtime story to them every night.

Write a fractured fairy tale. Change a classic story to different characters, a different ending, or rewrite the story from a different point of view.

If you introduce some of these activities to your children, they will surprise you with some ideas of their own. The activities and fun are only limited by their imagination.