One of the things I love most about making picture books is that what you make is limited only by your own imagination.
Kids learn best from play - guided gently through the how-tos and what something should look like. This is why I LOVE this as a fun activity for wee ones. They are the masters of their own creative universe!
I stumbled upon this 'how to' video from Simple and Easy Projects whilst doom-scrolling one night, and immediately got back up and tried it out. These mini-books are so simple to make, and can double up as homemade story cards for birthdays, too!
"She danced the Choo Choo Train song the end'
So then I tried it out on my granddaughter ('Goose'). She LOVED the fact that she had made her own story - completely from her own head. I asked her what the next part of the story was, wrote it down in the book for her, and she made the drawings. What was even better, was that she remembered the WHOLE story and read it out, several times, pointing at her pictures and telling us what each thing was.
Yes, it was like something out of a fever dream: "The princess was in the woods. She saw a frog and ran away. She went to a party. She danced to the 'Choo Choo Train' the end.' But it was all from her own imagination. From her excitement, I think, too, that she was chuffed that she was the author of the story, going to her mum and dad and saying 'I made a book! The Princess by Aurora!"
So why not give this a try, and see what tall stories your wee cherubs come up with?
Oh - and it works best with A3 paper 🙂