Story Time with a Twist

I have a confession to make.  I don't read to my kids as often as I should.  Yes, we read.  But it probably doesn't meet whatever the current guidelines are for daily readings.

Part of this is because we're so busy I sometimes just forget.  Part of this is because Clinton gets burned out quickly.  And part of this is because the kids and I can't always agree on what we're going to read.

Heidi Sage likes anything with ducks, ladybugs, butterflies, or monkeys.  Clinton likes only things to do with heavy machinery or fire trucks.  And I like the books that have a rhythm and rhyme.

One thing Clinton and I both enjoy is making up stories.  But this can often get stagnant as the same story gets told over and over, and Heidi Sage doesn't like it because there are no pictures.  So, I started thinking...

What's an easy way to still make up stories but also provide a visual?  Umm...Shadow puppets!  

To make these all I did was think of a few initial characters as you can see below.  I went to Google and typed in, for example, "Elephant Silhouette".  Then I selected one under images, dragged it to a Word file, and printed it on card stock.

I then cut them out and taped lollipop sticks to the back.  You could also use crayons, pencils, popsicle sticks, or whatever else you might have on hand.  (But I will say, the lollipop sticks worked perfectly.)

Then we got out a flashlight.  We started out by practicing projecting the images on the wall.  I showed Clinton how to make them bigger and smaller by moving them closer and further from the light.  We talked about how it has to be in the path of the light.  And we discussed why things even have a shadow in the first place.

Once we had our projecting down, we started using them to tell stories.  Heidi Sage loved naming all the characters/images as they hit the wall.  Clinton enjoyed making up sentences to go along with whatever images we put up.  The best part is I can add or rotate through new images to keep the stories new and fresh.  I look forward to seeing what adventures we will have...

Now for a little catch up.   THANK YOU to all of you who voted for Chelsea's wedding dress.  She won the Knock-it-Off contest at 733blog.blogspot.com by 3 votes!  

We realize we've been a bit absent this week, but we've all been busy.  Chelsea was in Vegas for some type of fashion convention.  I was...well...uh...I have three small children for Pete's sake...I'm always busy!  :-)  And Deborah was working on some super cute new duds for the littlest of our fans...

Coming Soon... lots of new onesies tutorials!

Welcome back to Monday!

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