Magic Stories
Forget about the lockdown, at the best of times entertaining children at home is not an easy task! Or is it? This simple game enjoyed by Aisling Syme and her 2.5-year-old daughter is a great example of ‘less is more’. If you have any recipes against lockdown boredom to share with us, we’d love to hear from you.
Crocodile Dinner Time
Using felt tip pens I draw two parts of a story on different squares of kitchen roll. Place one on top of the other, so that only the pictures on the top sheet can be seen.
Have a plate with some water at the ready, and start telling the story.
The tale begins with what you can see. I then place the sheets onto the water. The colours from underneath seep through the top piece of kitchen roll and appear. That prompts me to tell the second part of my story.
My little girl is enthralled!
I eke out another few minutes to myself whilst she plays with the coloured water and scrunches up the wet kitchen roll. We also have a chat about “what colour do blue and yellow make?” and so on.
Our favourite story is Crocodile Dinner Time and it goes like this:
Front sheet: “The big friendly crocodile was swimming through the cool blue water one day. But he was feeling sad because he was so hungry and had nothing to eat.”
Draw-
● A crocodile with its mouth open
● A few blue brush strokes for water
Back sheet: “Suddenly a shoal of red fish swum across his path in the stream. He gobbled them all up and felt a lot better.”
Draw-
● A few red fish
● Yellow sun in the top right corner
Top tips:
● Use bright colours and thick, felt tip pens.
● Don’t colour anything in, just go with stickmen-style drawings and outlines only. Otherwise, there will be too much ink and it looks messy.
● If you can see the pictures on the back sheet when you’re holding up the two dry sheets at the start; just hold the sheets slightly apart.
● Change the water in between stories.
● Keep it simple, 2 or 3 elements per sheet is enough.
● Don’t stress about your artistic talent; my drawing is awful and I’m not sure the kids really care!
My grandaughter would love to try this, Definatley something for when she is at Nanas house
This is marvellous! I would love to do it with my little grandson.
these look great fun my kids would love these
This is a great idea. My girls would love to do this tomorrow.
We’d have some quality, fun time doing this.
Looks really good fun!
This is the sort of thing I would have loved as a child so know mine would love it
What a clever, cheap idea
Lovely idea!
Sounds brilliant
looks fantastic
What a fabulous thing to do, will definitely be trying this out with Violet!