At the start of autumn

I made a Gruffalo storytelling basket for Edie

It has been used lots and lots

By all the children

And has rekindled our love of all things Gruffalo

Since then I have made a few different

Sensory storytelling boxes and baskets for Edie

Which I would like to share with you

Starting with a generic autumn tales basket

That can be used as a base for any autumn story

This pretty wooden tray is from Lidl

And cost just £3.99

The girls have already used it for an autumn tea party

With all their cuddly woodland animals

We have used it for collecting and displaying autumn treasures

And now we are using it as the base for our autumn sensory storytelling box

Into the tray we have added

One of our favourite autumn books

This book has no words so is great for encouraging children to tell their own story

It is great for asking questions

That children will answer

As they can see the answers or make them up

You can develop children’s vocabulary

With Edie we just point at something and say the word

Or say the word and get her to find the object

With the older children I might ask them to choose good describing words

For different people, animals and objects in the book

The pages also make a lovely background scene for small world play

Into the tray I added some owl puppets

These are great for storytelling

There are so many awesome owl books

Our favourites are Owl Babies

And Where’s Mr Owl?

There is

Of course

Also an owl in The Gruffalo!

I have also added a wooden pear shaker

This is great for adding sound effects when telling stories

And to use a fidget toy for a fiddler who needs help to focus on a story

We also have a wooden spinning top in autumn shades

The number blocks in seasonal shades

Are from My B Toys

We bought these for Bea when she was a baby

And have used them ever since

They are great for creating story scenes

For adding numbers to play

And of course they are traditional building blocks

To add more pops of autumn colour

I added felt balls and pom poms

These are really good for children who like something to hold while hearing stories

They can also be used to create story worlds and scenes

A lovely open ended ‘not a toy’ toy!

The bristle blocks are Spinaroos from My B Toys

Great for building and creating settings for stories

They also feel good in little hands

Finally we topped the tray with a terrific book

Where’s Mr Owl?

This was so simple to quickly pull together

With toys, books and household items we already owned

We can now add characters, play scarves, musical instruments

To make this storytelling tray fit specific stories

Storytelling baskets are so important for early literacy

They encourage children to retell a story

To add bits to a familiar story

Children will make up new dialogue

And dream up new adventures

Storytelling is a wonderful truly valuable activity in it’s own right

But it also provides the perfect foundation for story writers

These baskets

So quick and easy to do

Will facilitate the best bookish play for your children

It will inspire them to lose themselves in stories

I cannot think of a more wonderful gift than that!