The Imagination Station

Print these one page story-poems for your child to illustrate.

The act of illustrating:  Interpreting a story through imagination is one of the joys of reading.  In addition, illustrating a story promotes the development of the following literacy skills:

• stimulates creativity
• encourages visualization
• strengthens attentive listening for detail
• promotes the recall of detail
• orders the sequence of events
• interprets character attitude, emotions, and tone
• analyzes cause and effect
• supports literal comprehension ("The car was red.")
• supports interpretive comprehension (answering who, what, where, when, why ... "the sun was peeking over the hill as Billy crawled from under the covers."  When? It was morning, although the sentence never actually said that it was morning.)  
• supports critical comprehension (Was the story real or make-believe? "Could this have happened?")
• supports creative comprehension (Have your child continue the story beyond the author's presentation.  "What do you think happened next, the following week, ...?"

Directions: Print the text from one of the story-poems below. Read it to your child, giving him the opportunity to illustrate the content. We recommend that your child make a pencil drawing first, coloring in the details using crayons. (Print each .pdf file using one 8½ x 11 sheet of paper.)

Note: Stories are in .pdf format. If you do not have Adobe Reader, you may download the free program

by visiting their website at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html