Story Sticker Boards

I look after one little girl who is very imaginative and comes up with some fantastic stories, usually when it is impossible for me to make a note of them, like when I am driving or walking up to the school.  Having a rubbish memory, I've forgotten half of it by the time we get home.  I remembered a storyboard idea I had seen someone do on their blog (please let me know if it is your blog and I will add a link) and thought I could do something similar to capture her stories and ideas. 
The idea was that the children would create a story as they added stickers to a story board.  I know I could have got them to draw on the board, but as they are quite young, I thought they would get distracted from their line of thinking whilst trying to draw and also I thought the stickers would give them ideas to incorporate into their stories.
I painted a simple background scene on some cardboard and found as many sticker sheets as I could.

Forgot to take a picture before we used the boards so this is the underwater one we plan to use tomorrow.  As I was painting the other boards my bright spark daughter asked why I was't doing an underwater one to tie in with our theme.......hmmm why didn't I think of doing that, so I have made ocean ones to use tomorrow  as the children have asked to do the activity again!

I also dug out the dictaphone I had used for revision notes for a course, as I didn't want my frantic notetaking to distract the children.  Straight away they came over to see what I was up to.  I managed to position the dictaphone where they didn't notice it, as I knew they would find this far more interesting (they can explore this another day!)  They each selected a board and I modelled how to use the stickers to create a story.  We then took it in turns picking a sticker to add to our board,  as doing it this way gave them a chance to listen to each others stories.

Well 40 minutes later they were still at it!  I really didn't think they would be engaged in the activity for so long and they came up with some fantastic ideas.  I did have my doubts about how successful the activity was going to be when the first stickers J selected were of a computer and book, which she placed in the river! But all credit to her, she developed it into quite an adventure story! This evening I have added their story to their sticker boards so that they can share it with their mums and dads tomorrow.

 Links to EYFS:
PSED: Self-confidence and Self-esteem (confident to speak out and share their ideas with each other)
CLL: Language for Communication (listening to each other / using a wide range of vocabulary / sticking to a main theme / developing a simple story)