Little Hands Learning | Storyteller Box

“A monthly subscription box, inspired by the magic of books.”

My blog has definitely stepped into some kind of time machine – one minute we have Christmas, and then tonight, we’ve got August’s (yes, August’s) Little Hands Learning box.

This one arrived just in time for back to school and it was the storyteller box. Inspired by the book, The Pencil by Allan Ahlberg and Bruce Ingman. This was a beautifully illustrated book, which was witty in places and really got us to use our imagination. It was so much fun to read aloud together, and we just loved the concept of the items coming to life… even the naughty rubber!

The four activities included in the Storyteller box were:

• Be a storyteller
• Create a city small world
• Make pebble faces
• Write and illustrate a story

Funny Faces

The first activity we did was the pebble faces. We actually had some pebbles and stones leftover from a previous activity, which have been in Alfie’s craft trolley for I-don’t-know-how-long! There was a lovely box of 24 Crayola crayons supplied in the box, so we had loads of colours to choose from.

Alfie ended up drawing a smiley face, an alien, and some kind of animal. I made a girl and then a random scary creature! Once we had finished our designs, we played with them and even incorporated them in our stories.

It’s a Small World

The Little Hands Learning small world scenes are always so well thought out and so much fun. Best of all, they’re the kind of thing you can set up and return to – even if not the same hour or day. And every time you play, the outcome is different… there’s always a different way to play, new things to find and that means it will never get boring.

It was a joint effort colouring in the cityscapes, people, trees and cars – before I cut them out and positioned them in an art tray. The green sensory rice made a great base. I then left Alfie to play, and it was so nice watching him be imaginative, making up stories and creating personalities for the people. It was an activity we returned to a handful of times. We even added some natural treasures from the garden to add another sensory element.

Tell me a story

We absolutely loved the storyteller game and the beautiful book for writing and illustrating stories. Mum joined us for telling a story – which was definitely harder than it looked. We didn’t shuffle the cards very well, so all the settings and the animals were together, and it made it tricky for the story to flow in a natural way. Throw in Alfie creating sentences like “and then there was a ladder” and “there was also a potion bottle” – and we had a wild story on our hands! I was hoping we’d be able to the write the stories in our storyteller book but they’re never going to be best-sellers! I loved that we could make our own cards too – using people, locations and hobbies we know and like.

I was so impressed by Alfie’s efforts writing and illustrating his own story. I went through each step on the instruction booklet and independently, he made up the story. The two main characters were me and his friend from school – we were playing on the beach (well I was sunbathing, and his friend was in the water) before the ‘baddies’ came along and pushed him over. Of course, mummy saved the day, there was no drowning, and it had a happy ending! As he only used 4-5 pages, there are plenty of different stories that could be added… I can’t wait to see what he comes up with!

The Storyteller box is still available from the Explorers shop as a one-off box, or don’t forget you can subscribe (on a one-month, three-month or six-month basis). Alfie has since moved to the Investigators boxes, which are aimed at children aged 6+. And you can follow Little Hands Learning on Instagram for sneak peeks of future boxes, as well as plenty of other ideas, experiments, and inspiration.

Love, Lucy xx