story time - Storywalk® - outside

Being outside, reading a story, and a bit of running about.

Seems like a winning combination.

So we went on a StoryWalk®.

A StoryWalk® is just what it sounds like - a story and a walk.  As children walk down a path,  they come across the pages of a story book attached to boards on posts stuck in the ground or on trees or attached to something.  As you contine on  the walk, the story is read, page by page.

Some communities have created permanent Story Walk® book boards.  A fabulous resource for families to enjoy.

We kept it simple.

1.  Where to walk.

We StoryWalked in our school yard.

2.  How to display the book pages?

Our posts were made by the wonderful pre-school teacher's husband (both the pre- school teacher and her husband are wonderful).

1x2" posts (pointed on the bottom) and corrugated vinyl board screwed on top.  The book pages are held on with bull dog clips.  Pretty straightforward.

3.  What book?

This time I choose It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw.

It met all my criteria:  not too many pages, a story line  and illustrations that "worked".  And, as a bonus, it was about something that we could see outside - clouds.

(For this StoryWalk®, I recreated the illustrations on blue construction paper.  For future Walks, I will purchase 2 copies of the book - think $1.99 Scholastic Book Order specials -  and laminate the pages.)

We walked and told the story together.

The next day, flannel shapes were available to retell the story. KizClub has patterns for this and many other stories. 

This was our first StoryWalk®, and now I know what I want to do differently next time.

Twenty kids is too many.  Our next story walk will be when we have a student teacher and I can divide the class between us.  Ten kids will be good.

The posts will be farther apart and not in a straight line.  It would be fun to have to search a bit for the next page of the story.

We will have some outside time after we finish the story walk (this time we had to go inside for music class) so that the kids can rewalk and retell the story.

The StoryWalk® Project has a comprehensive FAQ page, including list of books that they have used and found successful.  

The StoryWalk® Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and developed in collaboration with the Vermont Bicycle and Pedestrian Coalition and the Kellogg Hubbard Library.