Teddy and Monkey: Story Sacks

After a visit to my local toy library and seeing one at my friends house I discovered story sacks!!! we used to have them at the schools I worked in but I didnt know what to call them then and most of the time we made our own! The ones at the toy library seem to be branded and there are a lot for sale on the internet, some for a lot of money!!!

it is dead easy to make your own though!
start by getting a bag, case, folder, take your child's favourite book, find copies of it at charity shops, or photocopy/scan pages. Cut them out, laminate, find objects around the house, make puppets, felt versions of the things in the book. Find activites on www.pinterest.com and add them to your sack.

here are two that I have done so far:

there was an old lady who swallowed a fly:

by some amazement I found the lady in a charity shop! she has an enourmous space inside her mouth that goes down to her feet so you can fit all the creatures inside her! I then looked (again in a charity shop) for some animals to put inside! It was a fluke that I found such a realistic fly and spider! the others all dont really match and are a mixture of wood, soft material and plastic toys. (this doesn't seem to matter as long as it is a representation somehow- even pictures would do)
and there you have it!!!

the second one was the hungry caterpillar:

I got several copies of the book. I cut one up and cut out all the fruit and the food and laminated it. I took photos of the pages that had pictures on both sides so could only use one side and laminated these instead. I gathered as many fruit and food items as I could find from plastic to wood to material and added them to the sack. I also found some lovely resources on www.pinterest.com but I cant recall what blog they were from so dont want to post them on here so as not to offend!

However, these two blogs have some nice ideas about making the food though: