Homeschooling Notes: Making Stories
Characters and plots with little kids
One positive consequence of teaching folk tales at the local Homeschool Hub was that my kids learned I could tell stories on demand without a book.
It’s died down a little lately, but for a few months they would ask me for stories near daily. Sometimes they’d ask for a Paul Bunyan story or a Jack Tale — “Jack and the Northwest Wind” is a favorite, as is “Jack and Ol Tush” (which I renamed “Jack and Grendel” on the theory that it’s a distant derivative of Beowulf).
Other times they’d ask for family stories, like the time my great-grandfather saw a headless man in a brass-buttoned coat walking across the marsh one misty morning.
And sometimes they just ask me to just make up a story. This is a taller order to do while you’re in the middle of fixing or eating lunch, so I got in the habit of recruiting them to contribute their own bits and pieces to help move it along.