Over the last many weeks, the children inSschool-age 3 have shown an interest in words, stories, and books. They’ve explored this through a variety of means and tools.
It started with an interest in Mad Libs. Educator Ali brought in a book of Fairy Tale inspired Mad Libs and challenged the group to complete the various pages within. This challenge was keenly accepted by all as they took turns sharing the book to complete the stories. Mad Libs involves a pre-written story full of blanks which invites the narrator to fill in the blanks with nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. The children worked in groups as they took turns asking each other for answers to put into the story. The best part of Mad Libs is that the plot of the story is usually hidden until it’s time to read the completed version, often resulting in some hilarious outcomes. To further extend this Ali brought in more Mad Libs books with different topics, and Educator Vanessa printed off lists of different words to go under the categories of adjectives, nouns, verbs, and adverbs to provide inspiration to the children so that they weren’t always using the same ones in their stories. We also printed off Mad Libs fortune tellers, invitations, and cards that we were able to find to further extend this interest.
Mad Libs led the children to drawing and creating their own books and stories. Maria, Mason, and Austin all worked together to create a comic book series. This involved them planning story lines and plots, deciding on characters, and even brainstorming the possibility of a series. They decided that they’d each write their own book for the series, with Maria writing the first one. Brielle, Korah, and Harper also joined in to share stories about their friends, pets, and stuffed animals.
Over time we decided to add to the story book writing by showing the children how they could bind books. Using tape, punching holes, and adding string and beads to the book spines, Alexandra, Sairen, and Ella all joined in to bind their books in creative ways. Each child decided how many pages they wanted in their story, then bound it either with the tape or by punching holes and tying the pages together. The wonderful thing about this was that they could continuously add pages to their stories because their binds were adaptable, making their stories even bigger.
After combining all of these skills together, the children in school-age 3 were able to make their own books from start to finish. This involved fostering our literacy skills, knowledge of books and how they’re made, and their story telling abilities. They used their social skills, creativity, and imagination to share their stories and create them.
Did you know one of our educators actually self-published their own stories? Perhaps we need Educator Vanessa to bring her own professionally bound books in and she could share the process with the children.
