A Bag Full of Stories

Yesterday we had crying, chasing, and pouting all before we made it to the breakfast table. With that much drama before 7:30am I knew that my kids were going to need a little extra attention for the day. I offered to take them to the park, a nature walk, some kind of outing...anyone? Anyone want to have fun?

No.

The consensus was that they just wanted to stay home and snuggle. So, we decided to go with that. We made a fort with blankets and chairs in the living room. Threw our pillows and flashlights inside, and grabbed the STORY BAG.

What's a story bag you ask? Well, it's a paper sack full of clipart. There's pictures of people, animals, food, places, some silly stuff, etc. And here's what we do with it:

1. Choose three pictures out of the bag (without looking)
2. Make up a story that includes all three of the things you pulled out of the bag (ex. fireman, snakes, watermelon)
3. Sit back and laugh as you enjoy the silly and thrilling stories that you come up with. You can use the pictures as props (the tiger can chase the man, the bird can fly through the air, etc.)

The kids LOVED it!  They were completely on the edge of their seats...look at this kid, doesn't she look thrilled ? ;)

We came up with some pretty crazy stories.  They cracked up when we drew out a fireman, snakes, and a watermelon and the story was about a fireman who was only afraid of one thing...watermelons.  I , quite honestly, was glad to entertain my children with a story that I have not already read 527 times and could recite with my eyes closed.  No, we all actually had to engage our brains for this one.
The best part is that there are endless possibilites in this bag.  And, at bedtime, they grabbed the paper sack and brought it to dad so he could tell them a bedtime story.

I'm pretty sure he was in character in this photo...that facial expression is not part of his normal look...it must have been some kind of crazy or demented character he was portraying.  Love that guy.

Anyways, it was a great, free, entertaining, new thing to do.  The kids even tried making up stories on their own.  The only thing that took some time was finding the clipart. I got my clipart from phillipmartin.com

 So, I included a PDF of the clipart that I used so you can just print it out, cut the pictures out, and put them in a sack.  Happy storytelling! :)

CLICK HERE FOR THE PRINTABLE STORY BAG CLIPART

P.S.- can you think of a story with these three random items in it?

dinosaur, mummy, skydiver