Show Me a Story Review & Giveaway--Ways to Inspire Creativity in Our Children

Today I have the pleasure of telling you about a book, Show Me a Story by Emily K. Neuberger. Even more exciting is that Storey Publishing is giving one of my readers a copy of this book. See below for details. 


This book has forty ideas to get your child storytelling. Many of the ideas are craft projects for children aged five and up, but some could be done with a younger child with help. And many can be used by younger children. As my regular readers know, I have a 3 3/4 year old and we have decided to send her to a Waldorf School so we are not teaching her to read. However storytelling is a big tradition in the Waldorf philosophy, so I love the ideas in this book. The book is divided into four sections: Story Starters, Story Evolution, Story Activities, and Story Play. I am going to share three activities with you from the four sections.

When I received this book in the mail, I quickly looked through it. This past month has seemed a bit busy. I'm actually happy to be at the start of school just to get our rhythm back. Even though I try hard not to overbook Hazel I found we were a bit frazzled by the end of the summer. I got this book inbetween trips and what not. I looked at it quickly and thought, "Oh, there are some great ideas in here." I wanted to try some right away. So I quickly made up some story cards. This is not actually a presented idea in the book, however it is borrowed or changed from several there.  I simply made a table in a Word document and used clipart for the things on the cards and typed the word each picture was. You can download a copy of mine here. I actually had to go back and add more because Hazel loved them so much.

She is not quite at the point of telling the story herself, but she loves to pick the cards and have me make up a story. I keep trying to involve her in making the story up, but she is not completely there yet. Her favorite card is the witch card. She would tell me to use the witch card every time. These are a great way to start a story and to keep it going when you get stuck (you just pick another card).

I had made these before we went to the Cape last week. We brought them with us, but did not use them as much there. At some point I need to laminate them or at least put clear Contact paper over them so they will stay nice longer.

Similar to the story cards, but a much more concrete (and in many ways more Waldorf) idea are story stones. You can see a couple of these on the cover of the book (above). The books are much prettier than mine. Since painting and drawing are not my strong point, I used some easier ways to make them and Hazel was able to help me a bit. First I used both rocks we found (when we went to the beach at my sister's house) and ones I bought specifically for this project. I found ones to buy at a craft store and some even at the Dollar Tree. Then I made three types of stones. The people ones I tried to make like the ones in the book. I painted the heads and used scrapbook paper for clothes. Then I pulled out various punches and used the punched pictures for some stones. Finally I used some stickers on the stones. On all of these I used Mod Podge to seal them (and besides the stickers) glue the pictures on.

Again, Hazel loved these. I sat down with her and told her a story using them and then she used them in whatever play she was doing with her Barbies. She actually put them in the basket above. I had given them to her in a different container that was not nearly as nice. The books list these in the Story Evolution section and suggest letting your child play with them in dollhouses, outside, the car, etc. to use them as a toy like a doll.

Although it is hard to tell in this picture, she was really excited for them. (She however did not like me fussy with how she was sitting for the picture, so she wasn't showing her underwear off.) The first thing she did was take them all out to see all the pictures on them.

The final project we have done so far is from the Story Play section. This section is more about toys that will get the imagination going. I loved this idea. It is so simple and yet can be so effective. I simply made some painted rocks. I actually took the rocks I did not use in the story stones and painted them. To paint them, I put a few rocks in a plastic zip lock bag and some paint, sealed it and rubbed the paint around the rocks. Actually Hazel helped me do this as well. Then I poured the rocks onto a piece of wax paper to dry. After the tops had dried I flipped them over so the bottoms could. When they all were dry I put them in a nice bag for Hazel and gave them to her. I saw them as jewels, but she had them all sorts of places (a birds nest, a fire). Needless to say she had her imagination going with them. We even talked about the yellow ones being like the stones in the book, Milo and the Magical Stones by Marcus Pfister (author of The Rainbow Fish). If you do not know the book it is a great one with two endings. I will share about it some time.

For more ideas with story stones check out Growing Vegetable Soup and Stone Soup.

So I would like to say that I am enjoying the book Show Me a Story and am seeing Hazel's imagination growing every day. I am also looking forward to when she is a bit older to do some of the other activities in the book.

Now it is time to giveaway a copy of this great book. Again this book is being sent by Storey Publishing (and they were kind enough to send me a copy to review as well). This is all I received for doing this post and everything stated in it is my own opinion.

Please follow my giveaway rules here. And I am sorry to my international followers, but apparently our federal regulations say the winner must be a United States resident.

Now onto the Rafflecopter. Just follow the Rafflecopter to enter and make sure you provide (or your account provides) an e-mail address for me to contact you! The contest runs from September 12, 2012, 12:01 a.m. EST to September 25, 2012 at 12:01 a.m. EST. The winner will be announced on Wednesday, September 26, 2012. The winner will have three days to get back to me before another winner is selected as stated in my giveaway rules.

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