Encouraging the stories

There is something very emotional about seeing your children's writing, especially something they've created for themselves.  It kind of gets me every time, and I don't expect it.  Sometimes I can be going about my day and find a scrap of paper with a made up shopping list and it nearly brings a tear to my eye.  I think it's probably pride.

Yoyo is the biggest creator in this family - she is endlessly making up stories on random bits of paper, and sadly they often end up trodden on, torn to make another story or even worse in the recycling bin.  So in an attempt to keep these magnificent creations we made some books for her yesterday (inspired by a post on Angry Chicken's blog last year).

We used some old scrapbook paper for the covers and plain white paper for the inside and simply sewed through the middle with the sewing machine.  I didn't want her to feel overwhelmed with filling these so they are literally 2 pieces of folded paper inside (so a total of 8 pages).

She had huge fun choosing the papers for these - and I bit my tongue and let her choose from everything.  No hiding the 'good' stuff!  She was even imagining the story titles before we'd sewn the books up.

So now we have a place for those wonderful gems such as 'Tinkabell the Magic Dog'

Tinkabell was a dog she was helfy and has good be havy (behaviour)
She is a magic dog when she goes to the mond (mound)

I won't reveal the rest of the plot - it's still at the editing stage - but Tinkabell does grow wings and visit people in Heaven at night (should I be worried?)

This little activity has been a success (littlest one has also now joined in), wish I'd done this earlier as it was so quick to do - toughest part was finding the lead for the sewing machine.

Give it a go.................!