Make Your Own Story Trail

Setting up your own Story Trail in your backyard is a funny and easy way to get moving and promote literacy.

A Story Trail is a way for families to read together outside, promoting literacy and movement. The pages of a book are laminated and mounted and presented one at a time down a trail or around a park. The pages can be spaced as close or as far apart as needed. Families can stroll from one page to the next, or you can encourage movement by having your child skip or run to the next page.

I thought it would be fun to create a Story Trail in our own backyard. Some prep work was required and the steps are as follows:

• Gather your supplies: book/copies, laminate paper/sheet covers, stakes (I used paint sticks).

• Protect the pages with laminate paper or sheet covers.

• Attach the pages to the stake. I used a staple gun.

• Choose a spot to set up your story.

• And Voila! You now have your very own Story Trail set up in your yard.

For our Story Trail, I chose to use one of my daughter’s favorite books, Sandra Boynton’s Barnyard Dance! I love the the movement words and animal sounds that are found throughout the book. When we read each page I encouraged my daughter to move like the animals in the book. She bowed, twirled and stomped to from page to page!

The StoryWalk® was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and developed in collaboration with the Vermont Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition and the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. For more information on the official The StoryWalk® Project please visit here.