Draw me a Picture Grannie...

One day I was with my grandchildren and found that we didn’t have much to do, so I quickly drew Jack and Jill on a piece of cardboard paper and cut them out. I put two holes in the bottom of each of them for the kids to put their fingers through (acting like feet for the character and to help them manipulate the puppet). Then I pretended I was taking Jack and Jill “up a hill” and I started telling the nursery rhyme. To this day, they go to these silly cardboard cut-outs and say let’s do the Jack and Jill story. They have even started to tell the story themselves and decided to bring in Humpty Dumpty to put a band-aid on Jack’s head when he falls; then Jack in turn helps Humpty Dumpty when he falls ha ha

You don’t need to be an artist to put something like this together. Believe me, mine weren’t perfect, but my grandchildren didn’t mind. At least they knew which one was Jack and which one was Jill! I like to use nursery rhymes for ideas because children have already heard a lot of them so they can quickly relate to the story you are telling, and for the most part, nursery rhymes are easy to remember. Whatever you draw, they will enjoy, as long as you “play along” with enthusiasm and steer them in the right direction to get them started. You can stray from the original nursery rhyme or let your grandchildren take the lead and give them praise for their story-telling ideas.

You don’t have to free-hand draw your pictures though, you can trace a picture from a storybook or colouring book, or print it out from the computer. I found a picture of the big bad wolf and a pig and cut them out and glued them onto a straw. This worked very well for telling the "Three Little Pigs” story. You can either do this as a craft together, or do it yourself, in advance. I prefer, when time permits, to do it in advance because kids don’t really want to just sit around and watch you cutting and pasting.

Have fun with this and start creating lasting and fun-time memories...