Jake, look ouuuuuuuut!

Our train table has several buckets for various types of play: trains (of course), wooden blocks, and LEGO.  This week, I've added a new bin for story telling.

Spontaneously, Jake can be crazily creative.  This happens totally on his own terms, and not always in the most appropriate setting, but he can tell fantastic stories!  However, if I ask him to tell a story, he often draws a blank or just repeats something he just heard.  As wildly fearless as he can be in his physical environment, I think he sometimes worries about not doing things well.  So, if he doesn't think he can rock it, he'll withdraw or refuse to try something.

To help build up his confidence & see that there's really no "wrong" way to tell stories, and that it can be fun to watch them unfold unexpectedly even for the storyteller, I've set up an option at the train table for storytelling.  The bucket has random loose parts that I'll swap out periodically.  For the moment, there are various people, trees, some animals, calcite crystals, a school bus, pinecones, and some vehicles.

This morning, we set up a scene with an old dinosaur nightlight.  The nightlight part broke, so I removed the bulbs & it's now a toy.  Before we really got into any story, an idea popped into my head: try compositing Jake into a toy scene.  I've thought of this from time to time, but it can be hard, like really, really difficult, to get Jake to pose.  However, he's gotten better about tolerating Mom's incessant request for photos, so after we set up the t-rex & the mountain, I asked him to look up at the alphabet on our wall, and pretend that the letter Z surprised him.  We had to take quite a few pics, but we got one that worked.

Before he left for school, I showed him a draft (he'll see the final pic below when he comes home from preschool today.)  When he saw the rough composite, it blew his mind. He asked with wonder, "Mom, was I really there with a dinosaur? Was I an Oomi Zoomi?"  It was so cute! 

I just used the 2 overhead can lights in our playroom and my point & shoot camera, so there was no attempt at good lighting.  However it was a fun little project this morning and I suspect it won't be the last attempt at Jake jumping into his stories!

 

 

Tonight, Jake asked me to take an Oomi Zoomi picture of him driving over the mountain in his truck.