Does your child have a favourite story?  A story book that you need to read every night?  And honestly you can memorise the whole story and was hoping your child won’t pick up that same story book again.

My son has lots of favourite stories and every night we sit at a cozy reading corner in his room, going through books.  I love that time with him, when he has me all to himself.  It’s a nice way to end the day with your child, reading a book, talking about the book, and have some cuddles before they start to squirm away from under your arms, ha!

Lately, at our story time, I decided to do something different.  JD loves drawing, painting, making things.  He is good with his hands and he has great imagination which usually translates into something quite remarkable.

So last week, we took out his scrap book, some marker pens and I got him to make up a story of his own.  He started by making up one sentence, then me adding another sentence, then him, then me again…

As he came up with his story, I also encouraged him to draw it out concurrently.  And that went on for a good 30 minutes. 

He started telling me a story about the His Rockets and The 3 Aliens.

I can’t remember the whole story, but it had something to do with his rocket flying into the space, landed on planet Mars, and he was drawing lots and lots of line to show me the “best” way to reach Mars.

Then there were some aliens that have long arms, long legs, sharp teeth…that came to look for the monsters.

Finally there was a big bang, and there were meteorites flying everywhere!

It was great fun.   My objective was to give him the opportunity to create a story of his own, illustrate, explain his thoughts, imaginations all by putting his pictures into words.

But it can also be an opportunity to broaden your child’s knowledge on topics of their interests, their volcabulary, explaining to them how the universe works by making it all exciting and most importantly in the way they can understand and comprehend.

It was spur of a moment thing, different, fun and it makes my child happy! 

My next project is helping JD to create a book of his own, that is another post next time.