Painted Story Rocks

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Are you looking for a new way to incorporate creative thinking and have fun with your kids?

Try creating your own easy to make toys!

We had the opportunity to review Birute Efe’s (from the blog, Playtivities) new ebook, Activities For Kids with Homemade Toys: Easy Projects Using only Household Items and it is loaded with fun stuff to do and make with kids and the best part is they get to play with what they create!

I love that in her description she says, “For the price of 1 cup of coffee you can have 25 tutorials and ideas of homemade toys and even more activity ideas”. This is so true! The ebook features step by step directions along with big colorful photos for each activity or tutorial. You definitely get your money’s worth with this ebook. I also love that the materials needed for the projects are common household materials, no big or expensive trip to the craft store needed.

From our own recent projects, Lil B and M-Woww enjoyed the Story Bag so much and we had leftover rocks that the Storytelling Activity in the ebook immediately caught our eye. Lately, we have been reading a lot of Thomas the Engine books and became our inspiration.  We decided to build the train characters out of rocks and use them act out the stories we had recently read (and make up our own stories too). Read the tutorial below to see how we made our story rocks.

Materials:

Rocks

Acrylic Paint

Paintbrush

Permanent Markers

Tutorial:

Step 1: Paint rocks (acrylic paint works best). Let dry.

Step 2: Add details. We used permanent markers to add details such as the faces and numbers to the painted rocks.

Step 3: Play!

Lil B wanted to move all the rocks at once to replicate the trains moving on the track, so we came up with the solution to place the rocks on a craft stick and slide that around the track. It worked out really well!

The rocks made it easy to mix and match colors and faces for the trains.  We created different faces on the rocks and would change the train’s facial expression based on the story. Lil B loved being able to change the faces to match the emotion needed to tell the story. He thought this was fun because his other toy trains have only a stationary face.

I definitely recommend checking out the ebook for the full project tutorial. Birute also includes more storytelling tips and suggestions for play.

This  ebook is a must for anyone looking for some creative ways to build and play with kids. It is available on Amazon. You can find more from Birute at Playtivities. She has more super cool kid activity tutorials on her blog too!

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