Story Sacks are an important aspect of the New Language Curriculum. I had initially heard about them at an Aistear Summer Course but at the time I was beginning to implement Aistear in my own class so I put it on the long finger. |Then last summer I began to gather resources for my own story sacks.
My first story sack was The Gingerbread Man, it linked with my Aistear theme of the Bakery. In the story sack I included a storybook, character cut outs which I downloaded from Sparklebox, PlayDoh and playdoh activity cards which were from Sparklebox. I felt that my class needed a fine motor focus both at home and in school so I included fine motor activities in many of my story sacks.
Each story sack contains everything the child may need, colouring pencils, PlayDoh, cookie cutters, rolling pin and I even had a foldable PVC mat for the PlayDoh.
I emailed the parents to explain what story sacks were and how everything in the Story Sack needed to be returned each day. Parents were also asked for their feedback in a little notebook that was in the pack also.
It has been very successful, it is a lot of work initially, but I always made a few at at time and then had them for different themes during the year. It is a work in progress, I am always on the look out for puppets, fact books and anything extra I can put in the story sack. But, the children love getting the story sack and parental feedback has been largely positive too so it has been a worthwhile effort.
My story sack task cards can be downloaded from my Mash.ie store for free!
Aistear Múinteoir 