My little guy isn’t so little anymore, as he just turned six. It’s great to see him growing up and so much fun watching him learn and teach his younger siblings everything he knows about the world. But he wasn’t always a big brother. There was that small amount of time where it was just him, my wife, and me.
So for a little change of pace, I wanted to repost something from my old blog, from a time four years ago when my little two-year-old man would help me create worlds every night. So here’s a look back to 2013…
Here’s a nice little story to share. In the last five or six days, I started telling my son a story when I lay him down at night. We still read him a book before he goes up there (usually some sort of Power Rangers variant) but now I’m trying to get him involved with the creative process. Start ’em young, right?
I’m telling him a story about a big ogre and a bunch of other critters in the forest.
What’s really cool is that he remembers every nightly “chapter” of the story and helps correct me when I forget minor details like a character’s name or favorite food.
Every night we build on the previous nights, just like if we were reading a real book. It’s a fun way to get my little guy tucked in and hopefully helping him learn some basic elements of storytelling, as well as lessons about friendship, teamwork, and all that stuff.
Just for fun, I’ll give you a quick synopsis of the story so far:
Day 1: The ogre scares everyone in the castle by pulling down the castle gate. He doesn’t realize right away that he shouldn’t have done that, but when he learns how everyone is frightened, he feels bad and eventually becomes friends with the people inside.
Day 2: The ogre is walking in the forest and finds a Gummy Bear who has a friend elephant (a tiny dwarf elephant, by the way) that is stuck in a tree. The ogre helps him down.
Day 3: The ogre is at the river with the elephant and finds a blowfish swimming upstream. The elephant tells them that the Gummy Bear is sad because his goldfish swam away. They put the blowfish in a bucket and take him home.
Day 4: While at Gummy Bear’s house, the blowfish decides to help find the missing goldfish. They go to the river to look for him. They see him swimming and call out for him, but he’s a baby and can’t talk yet, so he keeps swimming. He approaches the mouth of the river, swimming uncontrollably toward the ocean. To be continued 🙂
Day 5: The ogre hears his friends yelling and runs to the river. He lifts a boulder and places it at the end of the river, stopping the flow and rescuing the goldfish. They put the goldfish in the bucket with the blowfish and go back to Gummy Bear’s house to teach him how to talk so that he doesn’t run away again.
Day 6: When the other animals find out that the ogre is friends with the king, they ask if he would take them to the castle for dinner. Ogre goes to ask, but finds that evil ninjas have taken over the castle and tied everyone up. He runs home and his friends devise a plan. To be continued 🙂
Day 7: The Ogre pulls down the castle gate and runs in to confront the ninjas. While they are distracted, the Gummy Bear (who can bounce) and the elephant (who can climb) climb over the castle walls and untie everyone. The two fish swim under the moat and find the cable to raise the gate back up after the ogre has chased out the ninjas.
Okay, that was longer than I expected, but I just wanted to illustrate the type of kids’ story you can “write” with your kid every night. I encouraged him to help “tell” the story as much as I could, by having him pick some of the types of animals (the blowfish, for example) and he also chose most of their names.
It’s really fun watching him learn some of this stuff, so if you have young kids, you should try something like this. It’s a great way to get him excited about going to bed.
If you have kids, I’m sure you’ve got similar stories to share, and if you don’t, I hope you enjoyed this little sample of parenthood.
Have any cool kids’ bedtime stories? Leave a comment!
