We’ve been asked to join in with the National Share a Story month in May project, which encourages story telling with children.  As you know I love books, and luckily Monkey seems to share my passion.  We often make up stories, and with his wonderful imagination we travel to far off lands with our adventures.  If you follow my #365 weekly posts, you will know that he recently decided that a stick he found, was in actual fact – a dinosaur bone!  Mummy, once upon a time …… The author Jules Miller has written a piece for Forest Holidays on Forestipedia about fairy tales and she gives some tips for creating your own stories.  To me, childhood is all about wonderful imaginations, exploring and adventures, telling tales and having fun.

So with her tips in mind, and following our recent trip to Wendover Woods, we had some inspiration.  We talked about our trip to the Forest, about the mini beasts and animals we love, we talked about bug hunting adventures with Gramps in Spain, our story evolved ….

Once upon a time a little boy called Monkey lived in a world without bugs and mini beasts. His Gramps told him what had happened long ago, and how once the world was full of wonderful little creatures. A wicked witch had cast a spell on the deep dark wood, many years before and all the insects had been cocooned inside a massive spiders web.  The spell could only be broken by a brave young explorer.  Gramps believed that Monkey could bring all the little animals back to life, he could save the mini beasts. Gramps gave Monkey a magic magnifying glass with a bee on the handle.  With this piece of equipment Monkey would be able to find and release the animals from the witch’s spell. Gramps had given Monkey a map to help him find the deep dark wood and off he set. It was a long journey and Monkey was a little scared.

He found a log house in the middle of the deep dark woods.  Had this been the home of the wicked witch?  He decided to go inside.

The witch was long gone but he found a big scary spider and looked at it through his magnifying glass.  All of a sudden Monkey could hear rustling under his feet, he could see things moving on the logs, all around him the forest seemed to be coming back to life!

He turned around and saw a snail, an animal he’d only ever seen in Gramp’s old books.

The snail thanked Monkey for being a brave explorer and for rescuing him and all the other mini beasts from the clutches of the wicked witch and her servant the spider.  Now all of the animals were free again and the deep dark woods could come back to life!

Monkey couldn’t believe that all of these wonderful creatures had been missing from the world for such a long time.  He knew it would make his Gramps very happy to see them all again.  So he set off home to tell him all about his adventure and they all lived happily ever after.

We were asked to write a fairy tale in 100 words, our’s is more!  We love Fairy Tales here, Monkey adores The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child.  I grew up with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.  A good fairy tale is timeless in my opinion.  Monkey shows the same excitement when we read The Gingerbread Man as I did as a child.

I believe you can make your own stories from anything; a dinosaur bone stick, a photograph, a family trip, a postcard, an object on the beach.  All you need is a little time to talk together and a story will evolve.  It’s something I’ve been doing all my life; without really thinking about it!

Do you go exploring in the woods and forests with your children?  Do you read fairy tales? Do you make up your own stories and adventures?  Do share!

disclaimer:  we’ve been sent some lovely fairy tale books to help inspire us.