STory STarter STicks

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved stories very much.  He loved to listen to them, he loved to try to read them all by himself, and he LOVED to tell them.    

One day his Grammy gave him  a set of outdated unused calendar books and he started filling them with his own stories.  Because his mommy wanted him to learn how to be a creative and independent thinker, she happily wrote the stories down for him and encouraged the boy to illustrate.  One day, the boy's mommy noticed that a lot of his stories were missing settings or plots. That's when she thought of a game to help him learn how to tell better stories.

 She found some old sippy cups with missing lids and labeled them "Characters, Setting, Problem" and told the little boy that all good stories contain these things.

Then the little boy helped his mommy think of examples of characters, settings, and problems and she wrote them on popsicle sticks and stuck them in their cups.

All that rainy afternoon the boy and his mommy had fun pulling out different silly combinations of sticks and dreaming up endless story ideas.

 Then the little boy wrote a beautiful story complete with characters, setting, a beginning, middle (problem), and he came up with a delightful resolution.  :-)

THE END