Rainy Day Boredom Buster: DIY Story in a Bag

published Nov 8, 2011

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(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

We are starting to pull out some old standby activities for the upcoming stretch of indoor activities we will inevitably need. While giving our son’s closet a much needed overhaul, we repurposed some of those “treasures” that needed a new reason for being by making a few Story Bags.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

OK, so maybe the top photo doesn’t look like much of a transformation but after dredging through the heap of tiny toy-thingys we were able to make much better use of many of the items. We sorted them into 4 piles: charity, garbage, keep and “story bag” which got randomly allocated to 3 bags for later use. When the day for an indoor activity is needed we’ll pull one of these bags out and challenge ourselves to make up a story using any or all of the random pieces. We just participated in this activity at our local art gallery over the weekend and it spurred a lot of creativity. And laughs.

We tried 3 variations:
1. Child/ren make up a story and tell it to parent
2. Parent and child/ren work collaboratively on the story and present it to a third person
3. Parent and child/ren take turns building the story one sentence at a time

Besides being a fun activity it also hones story telling skills, reinforces the different elements that make up a typical story, and encourages creative thinking. We may bring the video camera into play the next time we do this activity or, just as fun, document the story together, with photos and words in a notebook.

(Images: Jackie Boucher)