The mermaid played a song for the whale.
Have you heard of story stones? Apparently I'm a bit behind on the story stone wave, so they're new to me. Nonetheless, the girls and I really enjoyed playing with them this summer.
There are no rules on how to use story stones, we just made up games as we went. One idea we had was to sit in a circle with your friends and the stones face down in the middle. Then you take turns picking one up at a time and continuing a story with them (one rock=one sentence). This is really fun, for any age too it tuns out! From 3 year old Gracie to 15 year old me, we all rocked those story stones! Another idea was using them as a guide to charades.
So where to start? How do you make them? We walked down to the beach to collect our special rocks, then Ella and Gracie painted the back drops and I sharpied on the image. You don't have to use stones though. If there aren't any available you could make story cards for instance! Ella had the idea to take pictures of objects and people's expressions then print them out into cards.
The amount of work the kids put into the making of the project or the type of game you play with them is entirely multi-approachable. The important part is that you all have fun, because story telling is one of the most creative and emotional activities you can do with kids and so to channel those concepts in all positive ways possible is key!
The mermaid's song
In the ocean there was a mermaid that loved a whale.
They had tea one day on an island near a banana tree.
The next day the whale gave a gift to the mermaid.
The gift was a song about a cat that lived on the island that liked bananas.
'The wild cat ate nanas' sang the whale in a carrying voice. 'And the oysters on the shore disapproved and said no more'.
The mermaid smiled at her gift and thanked the whale for his beautiful song.
The mermaid retold this story, of two loving sea creatures, in song to the whale.