In kindergarten, we work on sequencing.
Here's my son's story of Noah:
"Noah got out of a big boat, hit his head on a rock, and died."
I don't remember that part, you?
Anyway, he's very tactile so I thought it would help him to play with the characters as he listened to the story. There are some really expensive sets out there, but here's mine:
Materials: a few packs of peg people from Michaels, all the doubles and leftovers from making the object boxes, a leftover large makeup bag for storage (not shown), a dollar store tray, some construction paper, and a slab of whiteboard from Depot. Ignore that last item, it's not necessary. It was just handy.
To use:
1. Pre-read your story enough to know if it's in the desert or water or whatever to choose appropriate construction paper floor setting.
2. Dump all your junk into a lined tray.
3. Assign and dress characters (Our King Saul today wore a tea cup for a crown and David had a sauce pan full of mini fruit and wooden baseballs for rocks. Goliath wore a large rice bowl for a helmet and had a wooden bat and disk propped on him for a shield and sword. I LOVED it.)
4. Read story.
5. Have children retell it using the characters.
6. Wonder how dinosaurs and a polar bear snuck into the back of the Philistine army and if that may have turned the tide....
