Fantastic Storytellers Series Launch!

We've got a new release in a new series of workbooks that encourage writing and literature skills, the Fantastic Storytellers series.

How to Tell Fantastic Stories: A Fantastic Storytellers Activity Book, the first in the Fantastic Storytellers series.

Nourish your child’s creativity with Narrator’s upbeat help. Narrator will show students the parts of a story and give students the framework needed to develop creative writing skills. Students fill in blanks, answer review questions, and fill out brainstorming sheets similar to those used by adult writers. Includes silly black-and-white illustrations to color. Ages 6-9.

Available in handbound paperback ($11, includes shipping) and in printable PDF.

For Fantastic Stories in handbound paperback, use Paypal's "Note" to let me know where to ship it and to whom to sign it. You can also pre-order "Visual Writing Prompts," for $1 off the release price, coming out soon.

Coming soon...

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Make Your Own Booklet Project

Hand-sewn Booklet: Make Your Own

It's no secret that we're book lovers and storytellers over here. We've been studying the 7 continents in our homeschool co-op and, as one of the teachers, I've gleefully brought our family's passions to class, introducing the kids to folk tales from each region. Later, I'll post a mega list of all the picture books we've used.

Oceania/Australia presented a unique challenge. For Africa, we chose a particularly hilarious Anansi story and performed a puppet show for my son's presentation at co-op. But for Australia, we struggled to get a hold of picture book at all. 

So, we made our own!

I wanted to do a true booklet so my 3rd grader could hand sew it, which he enjoys, and because booklets like this are more durable and feel more like a "real" book than simpler projects. We already had a manual craft drill, a darning needle (they are blunt), and strong thread.

What we do NOT have is a wonderful but expensive program like InDesign to order the pages for easy printing. When you make a booklet, you lay the sheets on top of each other and sew through the middle, so each page becomes two half-sized pages--the numbering can get complicated. I've made pdfs and docs with blank, numbered pages ready to print using standard programs like Word and Open Office. Get them along with instructions and other booklet project ideas on my teacher pay teacher site to Make Your Own Booklet.

You could staple it if you don't want to sew it, but for us, the sewing is half the fun.

For Australian mythology, we used the story of Crow Steals Fire, broke it down into plot points, and rewrote it in my son's words using his illustrations. He enjoyed retelling the story and sewing the book, so we'll be doing more booklet projects in the future!

Have fun!