Using Story Sacks to bring Story Books to Life

Back in May, I wrote a blog about 50 years of The Very Hungry Caterpillar  and described a visit to the local library with Daisy where we selected some books and a Story Sack to borrow from the library.  While Daisy is now familiar with borrowing library books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar was her first story sack.

 A story sack is a large fabric drawstring bag which contains the story book, some story props, a related non-fiction book and a game of some ideas for activities.  Here are the contents of The Very Hungry Caterpillar story sack.

 Using props with a story book provides an interactive way to engage children in storytelling and helps them remember the story  The props stimulate a child’s imagination helping them relate to the characters in the story which in turn will strengthen emotion development.

 The contents of a story sack provide a wealth of story-linked activities.  The Very Hungry Caterpillar story sack also included an A4 sheet of activity suggestions for parents (and grandparents!).  You’ll find more ideas will emerge as you use the book and story sack. 

 As I was reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Daisy she was determined to match each story prop to the appropriate page in the book and she particularly enjoyed fitting the food over the images in the book..  This, in it’s turn, lead to plenty of counting and talking about the caterpillar eating MORE each day which made more links back to our recent grocery shopping outing (previous blog) 

 After we had read the book and had used all of the story props, Daisy held onto the butterfly imitating a butterfly in flight.  Daddy arrived at this stage and Daisy began to talk about butterflies.  Then Daisy went off with Daddy to see if there were any butterflies on our garden as Daddy talked to her about different sizes of butterflies. 

 It wasn’t long before Daisy was able to tell me that we had white butterflies in our garden. 

 

 Our first story sack experience demonstrated just how stimulating a story sack can be.  While listening to the story Daisy used the story props to follow along, then she practised her counting skills, had an introduction to the life cycle of a butterfly, looked and found butterflies on our garden. All of this prompted Daisy to remember our visit to the Butterfly House at the London Zoo where a huge, brightly patterned butterfly sat on her buggy and refused to move off!

Story sacks were first created in the 1990’s and they have become a popular resource in nurseries and schools.  Nowadays story sacks are also accessible to parents and grandparents, through local libraries.  (Our story sack counted as one item when we took it out on loan and had was on loan for the same length of time as a book would be).

 Granny Smith says

As the school holiday approaches, the summer reading challenge ‘Space Chase’ is underway at local libraries.  It’s a great opportunity for grand parents to encourage our grandchildren to borrow books and story sacks from the library and to take up the Summer Reading Challenge.