If you’ve ever watched a child play with toys, you’re a witness to storytelling. From an early age, children are writers.
As they play with their Barbies or soldiers or favorite television figurines, they are creating characters with motivations, desires, and personalities. When they arrange those toys in a camping scene, a desert, an ocean, or anything their mind imagines, they are creating settings. As the characters play, argue, battle, and talk with each other, plot, problems, and solutions form.
Playing is storytelling. Mr. Rogers once said, “Play is the real work of childhood.” I also want to add that play is the real work of writing.
Play is also a means for a basic form of visuals-first writing. We are strong believers in visuals-first storytelling, in which students draw and create illustrations first in order to gain ideas and brainstorm characters, settings, and plots. By visually mapping out parts of a story by illustrating first, students no longer battle writer’s block. By drawing illustrations first or creating scenes on Canva, students gain even more writing ideas. It allows the juices to flow, so to speak. It allows even the most reluctant writers to ease into writing and brainstorm ideas from their own drawings and sketches to generate a wonderful story.
Read more about our Visuals-First Approach to Writing here:
That’s why we created our Toys to Tales Writing Center. Children use toys as a hands-on approach to visuals-first writing. Students play and explore with toys, imagine, brainstorm, illustrate, and then write. Read more about it below.
Toys to Tales Writing Center
The Toy Stories Writing Center is a playful, hands-on way for students to practice the visuals-first storytelling approach before putting pencil to paper. Instead of staring at a blank page, willing the words to appear, or even starting with crayons and drawing paper, students use toys, visuals, and imagination to create their story first. Students use their hands and the first work of childhood: play, to build a story.
Step 1: Set-Up & Play
This writing center is very simple. Grab a bin or plastic tub, throw in a variety of toys, and print off the prewriting papers. I especially love the Safari LTD Toob Toys, which come with a variety of themes such as jungle animals, knights, pirates & mermaids, sharks, and more. Each tub or bin can contain one of these Toob themes.
Perhaps you could visit thrift stores, yard sales, the Dollar Store, or your kids’ unused toys to create a bin of imaginative play. Once a bin has been set up, then allow students to just play and explore.
The important part is that students are excited to write because they know they just play first, and that’s a ton of fun.
Step 2: Soar! Get the Ideas Flying!
As students play, encourage them to think about:
Who are my characters?
What are they like?
Where are they?
What could happen here?
Remind students that playing is part of the writing process! Moving the toys around can help them discover story ideas.
Students use their toys to build their characters and setting. While they play, they create problems, solutions, and plot points.
Have them think about the sensory details of their story world as well as they play:
- What can the characters see?
- What can they hear?
- What can they smell?
- What can they feel?
- What does the setting look and feel like?
As they play, they can either begin to fill out the pre-writing maps or they can fill them out afterward.
The prewriting maps included are:
- Interview Your Toy (Character Development)
- Character Mapping (Draw & Write)
- Setting Mapping (Draw & Write)
- Problem & Solution Mapping (Draw & Write)
- Beginning, Middle, & Ending Graphic Organizer (Draw & Write)
- Story Snapshot (Draw a Scene)
- Adjective & Sensory Words Idea List
- 36 What If? cards for Extension
Students draw and write down the world and characters they are imagining, creating, and playing on the prewriting maps.
Step 3: Write!
Once students have played, imagined, built, and planned their story, they are ready to write their rough draft.
We have included three differentiated levels for a variety of grades. Students can write a 3-paragraph story, a 2-paragraph story, or a 1-paragraph story depending on their level.
Encourage them to use their prewriting maps as guides rather than trying to remember everything they imagined. Also, give them flexibility to change anything from the prewriting sheets. Sometimes the best stories are the ones that differ from the prewriting pages.
Students can extend their writing with our What If? Character, Setting, and Plot/Problem cards that are included in the Toys to Tales Writing Center. These cards give fresh ideas and perspectives to expand their stories and add details.
For their rough drafts, remind students to:
- Add descriptive details.
- Show what characters do and feel.
- Use sensory words and descriptions.
- Stretch out the important moments instead of rushing through them.
Step 4: Glow, Grow, Glow Peer Editing
Once students have drafted their stories, they can read a peer’s story and peer-edit with a partner using our Glow/Grow/Glow Oreo model which is included in our writing center.
Interested in more about our Glow/Grow/Glow approach?
Teachers are encouraged to meet with students individually as well after a peer-editing session.
Step 5: Final Drafts
Once students have edited and revised with a peer and their teacher, they can write their final story. Included in our Writing Center are final publishing papers and a sheet to include one illustration from their story. Keeping with our visuals-first approach, students can even draw their illustration first to gain additional details for their final drafts.
Toys to Tales Writing Center
Turn ordinary toys into extraordinary stories with this hands-on narrative writing center! Toys to Tales helps elementary students develop creative story ideas through imaginative play before guiding them through the complete writing process.
Students choose toy figures or animals to inspire their characters, setting, problem, solution, and plot. They then use the included graphic organizers, writing prompts, sensory word bank, rough-draft pages, peer-editing checklists, publishing pages, and writing rubrics to create an original narrative with a clear beginning, middle, and ending.
What’s Included:
- Teacher directions and writing center setup ideas
- Student writing center directions
- Character planning and toy interview worksheets
- Setting graphic organizer
- Problem-and-solution planning pages
- Beginning, middle, and ending plot organizers
- Story Snapshot drawing activity
- Adjectives and five-senses sensory word bank
- Character, setting, and problem “What If?” writing prompt cards
- Differentiated rough-draft writing paper
- Glow, Grow, Glow peer-feedback activity
- Three differentiated peer-editing checklists
- Final-draft publishing paper with primary and standard writing lines
- Illustration page
- One, two, and three paragraph narrative writing rubrics
Soar into Writing Framework
If you love the idea of visuals-first writing and want to incorporate technology, check out our Soar into Writing framework, in which students use the graphics and magic of Canva to illustrate before they write, and then create their own E-Books.
Conclusion
This writing center helps students discover an important truth: writers don’t always have to start with words. Sometimes, they start by playing, which is a fundamental need of children.
When students move a toy across a scene, give a character a personality, imagine a problem, or act out what might happen next, they are already doing the work of a writer. They are creating characters, building settings, developing plots, and making decisions about what happens in their stories, all before putting a single word on the page.
That’s the power of play. Play gives students a way to visualize their stories before they write them. When students can see their story, they have something to say.
The Toy to Tales Writing Center turns something children already know how to do-play-into a wonderful writing experience. It helps students build confidence, develop ideas, and experience writing as something they can imagine, create, and enjoy.
