Tired of reading the same books over and over? Making story time even more fun is easier than you think with story time flash cards. A little while ago, I made a new deck of CLUE cards to accommodate an extra player to join Professor Plum, Miss Scarlet, and the gang: The Detective. I realized that when you cut poster board into uniform rectangles and attach printed photos to them with a gluestick, you have a “Real” looking deck of whatever you please.
Students make flash cards all the time to help learn math, languages, and just about any other subject. They are easy to make and best of all, though they stay the same, they recombine to be different every time!
Here’s what you’ll need:
- 1 poster board
- 1 glue stick
- Scissors
- Any group of images (use old magazines or print images from the internet)
Cut the poster board into uniform rectangles, trace a deck of cards if you like. Paste the images onto one side and allow to dry. Shuffle and “Deal”.
Dealing means to try to connect the cards into one story. Here is my story:
There once was a pair of men named Tony and Ynot. Tony always did things forwards and Ynot always did things backwards.
One day a traveling circus arrived in Tony and Ynot’s town by boat. They were excited to start their next show.
Unfortunately, the devil met Tony on his way to see the circus and offered him a little box. Tony was scared and ran away.
He ran away but the devil changed into a little man and followed him everywhere he went on a donkey. All Tony wanted was to go to the Circus.
Ynot decided that he wanted to go too and got in his upside down boat (Ynot did everything backwards) and made sure that his wife rode outside the boat (Ynot did everything backwards).
The circus performers started to unpack their unicycles and juggling pins.
Tony gave Ynot a piggy back ride to the circus because, well, Ynot does everything backwards.
The end.
It’s not a great story, but it makes story time into a game and I promise you I had fun. Your child can even get in on telling the story by describing what’s on the card. If you make a good enough deck, your children can entertain themselves with it on long car rides. Give it a try, you may find that you (and your children) have a better knack for making up stories than you realized.
