A story walk with chalk

One of our summer bucket list experiences is to go for a story walk.  I have thought of a few ideas, some I am sure we will do, however they all involve some prep and props to carry.  Then this morning I suddenly thought I could use chalk – thank you the playing outside chalk link up for putting chalk to the front of my mind.

We often tell stories while we are out walking the dog.  We start our walks with me wearing Luath,  I try to give the dog a decent pace walk initially.  Some days Luath is happy just to bounce along, looking and talking.  Some days she starts singing or repeating words from a story, so we will do that.  Other days she is so desperate to get down I start reciting a story (either made up or from a favourite book), often involving us looking for things and this distracts her for a while.  The two favourites to tell in the woods are “The Gruffalo” and “Going on a bear hunt”.  I picked The Gruffalo for today’s story walk. 

First up at the side of the path, the mouse

Luath saw me drawing the mouse, but was so excited when we stepped back and there he was. 

All ready to start his walk in the deep dark woods.
            
We walked on a bit.  I said some of the story, and asked Luath what did the mouse see first.  When she said fox, then I started singing “we are looking for a fox, looking for a fox”.   We found him on the base of a tree, just above his underground house.

The fox and the mouse exchanged words and then on we went walking past the rocks where the Gruffalo enjoys roasted fox.  Again I asked Luath who the mouse met next and so next up we were “looking for an owl, looking for an owl”.  And we found him just below his treetop house

OK daddy said when he saw the photos it looked like a cat, but Luath told me it was an owl. The owl invited the mouse to his tree top house, but the mouse was off to meet a Gruffalo, and meeting him by a stream,(which is at our walks halfway point so we just pointed in the direction of the stream) 

We kept walking through the deep dark woods, there was a gap in the story, but we recapped on the story so far and then "we were looking for a snake". We came to a log pile house.

And met a snake

Who slid off at the mention of scrambled snake by a lake (there are four lochans in the wood so we pointed to the nearest one), 

Luath was getting keen to walk as this is the point in the woods where she usually gets down.  We just had time to spy the Gruffalo.

Normally our walk is a loop but today we about turned and retraced our steps so The Gruffalo could follow behind the mouse and meet all the creatures in the woods.  Luath spied the snake quickly.

I had forgotten which tree the Owl was on but we saw the fox and the mouse.  While we were walking back we stomped like a Gruffalo, flapped our wings like the owl, sneaked like the fox, were quiet like the mouse and slid like the snake – Luath when down on the ground to be a snake.

Luath also had a go at drawing with the chalk on some tree stumps (no photos as I was too busy keeping her safe).  I have an idea how she can be more involved with the drawing next time - I picked up some bark and some washed down slate.  It was getting too near our lunchtime to try that today.

What a fun outing and it was so good that all I had to do for preparation was put some chalk in a bag.  We will definitely do this again.  The Gruffalo fits in well, especially as all the creatures are lurking in our woods, we have seen field mice in the stone dyke, daddy has seen an owl, I think there are grass snakes, there are foxes about (they are more shy than their town cousins) and of course The Gruffalo is there somewhere.  I am thinking of other stories we can try out.

(Luath is 17 months)

linking up with

Tuesday Tots, see what other tots are up to,

playing outside chalk, see more ideas with chalk

read, explore, learn, see more ideas based on children's books