Weekly Challenge 10 - Sensory Stories
Reading regularly with children supports their social and emotional development as they have quality time and shared attention with a parent or carer, supports language and communication development in having a shared conversation topic and interest to talk about, as well as developing memory skills, recognising sounds and patterns, and imagination! But sharing stories doesn’t just have to mean reading books together.
For all children, creating a sensory story with a variety of props helps make story time more fun, engaging and memorable!
Weekly Challenge #10 – Sensory Stories
Can you make a sensory story to retell a familiar book or story?
Making a sensory story means thinking about the key events/characters/places in a book, and finding ways to represent them that stimulate all of our senses, including touch, sound, smell and taste! Put these together in a box or a bag, and as you tell the story, take out a prop to enhance that bit of the story. This can be as simple or as elaborate as you like. Once the adult has used these props to tell the story a few times, let your child retell the story in their own words using the props. All of it can be things from around the house, but the most important thing is it is not just to look at, but objects that feel, sound or smell like the thing you are describing.
For some stories, like ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’, this might be very easy (some grass or leaves to feel like grass, some clothes in a bowl to make a splish-splosh sound, some Weetabix that feels like mud, sticks that snap and sound and smell like the forest, ice cubes to feel (and taste!) like snow, a hand-held fan to feel the wind, and some soft fabric for the bear’s fur), for other stories you might have to think more creatively.
See this video for more instructions on how to create your own sensory story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PeZ7r6aekA
Read-along books
The Book Trust have developed their ‘home time’ area of their website with lots of new ‘read-along’ books for 0-5s, split into books for different age groups. You will find plenty of familiar and new books there to share – you could even create a sensory story based on one of these!
https://www.booktrust.org.uk/…/ha…/hometime-for-your-child/…
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