This week in the Pacific Northwest, the long lost sun was out for three whole days in a row! It’s time to move this party outside…
Storytelling is great fun inside or out. Here’s an easy way to use your backyard for storytelling inspiration:
You will need:
- An adventurous storyteller, or a whole crew of them!
- A few rocks for each participant. Rocks should be small enough to hold and move easily and smooth enough to decorate with markers or paints.
- Permanent markers or paint supplies
- Setting cards: You can use these, or make some to match your own yard. (If you want the larger version, like in the picture above, print these. If you want the tiny version to stick on jumbo popsicle sticks
like in the picture below, use this set.)
- Trouble Stone (See below)
- Sidewalk chalk- optional
- Baggie, shoebox or another container to hold the supplies
Get Ready
- Create your characters: Use paints or markers to draw a face or other simple details on each rock to transform them into characters. Be sure to make a main character and a few supporting characters. We made one set to use every time we play. You could add new rock characters each time, but be sure to save the old characters to reuse as well. The more the merrier!
- Create a Trouble Stone: Decorate a rock in any way you wish, as long as it looks different from the “character” rocks.
Get Set
- Place your Trouble Stone anywhere in the yard. On your adventure, when you come to the Trouble Stone, your character will encounter a problem.
- Choose a “setting” card from the pile. Go to an area in your yard that matches the card. Your main character (rock) will travel around the yard on an adventure, starting here. You may want to have your story end here too, since many adventure stories lead the main character home again in the end.
Play!
- Begin your adventure. Tell and act out a tale with your rock, choosing the events as you go. You may move to other settings as part of the adventure. Use your other rock characters to enhance the story along the way.
- At some point, have your character encounter the Trouble Stone. Decide what problem the stone represents. It could represent a character that causes a problem, a natural disaster, or some other conflict.
- Make your rock character act out a solution to the problem, followed by a suitable ending to the story.
Optional: Use sidewalk chalk to trace the path of your adventure. This might be handy if you want to retell the adventure right away, or just to look back at the end to remember where you traveled.
If you want to be fancy, you can make the whole thing into a kit, like this:
Modification: You can skip the setting cards, and just talk about the different settings your child might want to include in the story. After you’ve played once or twice, the whole thing will become more casual anyway. I’ve included the parts about setting, characters, problem and solution to reinforce the elements of story, but the real fun of this activity is simply making up a pretend adventure in the backyard!
Enjoy the sun if it’s out where you live!