Do you have a bored child on your hands? The ‘Picture me a story’ game is a great activity to get everyone involved in storytelling; it encourages ideas, helps start a story, builds vocabulary and conversation.
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The I’m bored ‘Picture me a Story’ game can be played with one child or many. It can be played with any age group.
It is an excellent way to start sharing stories from the imagination especially if you find it hard to make stories up on the spot.
How To Play The Picture Me A Story Game
What You Will Need
- Magazines – all sorts travel, nature, fashion, interiors, lifestyle, food, cars, motorbike mags, including newspaper supplements etc.
- Scissors for various abilities
- A shoe box or similar small box to fit your props into.
How to Play
The first time you play this game you need to do steps 1 – 3, the second time you play this game you can just start at step 4.
- Give everyone a magazine including you.
- Go through the magazine and cut out images you like. With toddlers they can point out what they like and you can cut that out for them. But if your kids can use a scissors encourage them to cut out the images. Set a timer for this activity if you wish.
- Place the cut images in the box. Adding images to the box can be a separate activity depending on age groups.
- Mix the images up.
- Everyone picks a few images from the box. If there are only two of you playing you can pick three or four images if there are five kids playing one or two images. Vary the number of images per participant and for how long you want the activity to last.
- Show all the images. For tiny tots and toddlers you can start telling the story straight away from the images.
- With older children you can ask who wants to start the story, they might need some help or for you to do the first one, link the stories and images together.
Other Things You Can Try
- Make a book of your story by sticking the images into a scrapbook and filling the story in. You can all share in doing that.
- Kids can draw different parts of the story or the ending
- Family photos make a fun addition to the box and story lines
Thrifty hint: Keep an eye out in second hand shops for suitable magazines. Ask your hairdresser, doctors, dentist or neighbours can you have old copies of their magazines.
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Over to you now. Did you try the Picture me a story game? Tell us how you got on in the comments below.
About the Author: Jill Holtz
