Make Your Own: Story Stones

I recently ran across the idea of making story stones from Happy Hooligans. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon some river stones on clearance a few days later... then discovered an unopened container of modge podge in the garage... and then found two discarded Ranger Rick magazines at the library. The world was trying to tell me something, no?

This turned out to be an incredibly easy project that kids can help with! You start by cutting out your pictures, sizing them at least a bit smaller than the flat surface of the stones. The magazines had a lot of animal images, so I cut those out in advance. Older children might enjoy cutting pictures themselves or drawing pictures to use. I am sure stickers would also work well and have the benefit of letting younger kids get more involved in the selection process. As for me, I was excited to find a lot of pictures with word labels on them--sneaking in a few sight words and phonics practice! And the labels were helpful for the more "exotic" animals I found, like the pika. When choosing your materials, the thinner the paper the easier it is to get it to lie smooth without creases. I wouldn't recommend paper thicker than magazines unless you have especially flat stones or have a tolerance for a little puckering. (The puckering is not a problem at all, it's just a matter of preference.)

Once you have all of your pictures ready, apply a thin layer of modge podge to the stone and smooth out your picture onto it. Once it is flat, cover it with another layer of modge podge to seal it in. A sponge brush worked great for this, but any brush that won't leave a lot of texture strokes would be fine. At this point in the process, my 18-month-old got very into applying the modge podge to the stones ("Tap tap tap!") and my 4-year-old was more interested in running to the yard to look for more stones. And by the time I started working on the last stone, the first one was completely dry and ready to go. Nice! Here's a picture of this first batch:

We just tried the story stones out for the first time, letting my son pick four stones from a bag and then taking turns adding to a story. It was fodder for some silliness and he sounded out "parakeet." My daughter spent the entire story time taking stones out of the bag and putting them back in. The only change I am going to make is to have more variety in the pictures. The animals served as characters, but I'd love to have some stones for settings, actions, and emotions to give a little more of a spark to get the stories started!