Many a white page has been known to cause “writer’s block.” At The New School we recently tried something new. During Read Aloud we are reading “Sweep: The story of a girl and her monster” to the older children. Early in the book Nan, the main character. reminisces about happy days. Her  Sweep collects lost objects from his travels around London and puts them in his hat. He then picks out the objects one by one and weaves a story for his young charge. Our Story Soup was created by each child, who brought from home an object which we put into a hat. As the objects were placed on the table you could hear the creative juices flowing. The five children then proceeded to create original and entertaining stories. Below are their introductory sentences which quickly developed into fascinating, funny and creative stories.

Katie: I was in the forest when I tripped on the rock that would change my life.

Escher: Lucas was walking down the street when he suddenly stopped.

Amelia: Lucas was hungry and he remembered seeing a donut shop down the street.

RJ: A little boy was walking in his backyard when he came across a key and a ball.

Evan: Seth stared at the busy streets of Mexico that shot past outside his window.