Friday, May 11, 2012

The Night Walk

I am now gathering ideas for my summer family story time programs.  I plan to have programs that will fit in with the "Dream Big - Read!" theme.  One program will be a pajama story time, one will be about the moon and stars, and one will be about night animals and stories of the night.

One of the types of stories I like to tell are draw and tell stories.  I wanted a story that took place at night and ended up being an owl on a branch so I wrote "The Night Walk."  It is not difficult to guess what the storyteller is drawing so it should appeal to both older and younger children. 

The story is about a brother and sister who go for a walk in the woods at night with their father.  As the story is told the owl on a tree branch is drawn:


The picture is fairly simple to draw.  It is important to remember that the goal is just to create a recognizable owl not a work of art. There are 14 steps to create the drawing.



I practice several times on small pieces of paper until I am comfortable with the story and familiar with the drawing sequence.  (Even though I wrote the story, I still found myself wanting to draw the branch before the moon.)  Below is a photo of some of those practice papers.  The owl looks different in each drawing but it still looks like an owl.

 
I enjoyed writing this draw-and-tell story because I started with the drawing and then came up with the story to go with it.  The only things I added to the original drawing were the leaf and the moon.  It was fun to work backward and make up the story to create the picture.

The story along with the drawing sequence and a photo of the numbered drawing is available as a Google document here.

Draw-and-tell stories are not as hard as they look.  It just takes a little practice to get comfortable with what you are doing.  Just remember the drawing sequence and tell the story in your own words.  Your audience will be most impressed when you draw them a story so don't be afraid to give it a try.

This week's Flannel Friday Round-Up is hosted by Sharon of Rain Makes Applesause.  Be sure to visit the new Flannel Friday blog for complete information about everything Flannel Friday.

11 comments:

  1. I am in awe that you drew the original picture and wrote the story, too! Wonderful job!

    I am going to share this with a coworker who likes to do draw-and-tell stories for our SRPs. (I'm not brave enough to do one myself yet but I do help him out when he wants to add live-action parts to his story. I sometimes dress as one of the characters in the story and help him with the telling as he draws...)

    Thank you for your generosity in sharing this with all of us! Very impressive!

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  2. I love draw and tell stories! I will have to give this one a shot sometime. :)

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  3. I'm glad that there are draw-and-tell fans out there. I love doing the upside down ones. It's fun to mix it up and the kids love guessing. It's fun to see a bunch of kids look at a drawing upside down, especially when you are drawing it rightside up.

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    1. We've done a few of those and the kids loved it! We have even used the final picture in a drawing because so many kids wanted to take the picture home. LOL We put everyone's name in a hat and drew the winner. :)

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    2. That's Great!

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  4. This is great! Look forward to trying it out this summer. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. LOVE draw and tell stories. Hope to see more. Maybe "Draw and Tell Tuesdays" could be in our future!

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    1. I will definitely try some more but they are not as easy to do as other formats. (I like all forms of storytelling so I post whether it's a flannel story or not.) I did one that ends up being a shark over 10 years ago and this is the first one I've done since then. I'll have to find it and post it for a future Flannel Friday.

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  6. I LOVE draw and tells! I try to use them with my ESL students :)

    I learned one when I was little that I use a lot with my students. Sometimes to practice predictions, sometimes for linking words, sometimes for memory tricks really the list just goes on and on!
    http://eslcarissa.blogspot.mx/2012/06/tell-and-draw-stories.html

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    1. I haven't seen that one before and I've been doing draw and tell since 1990. I will definitely be using it. Thanks for sharing.

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  7. I love this draw and tell story! Thank you. Perfect length and the kids feel so good because they can guess the drawing.

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