Story Book Mimes (Language arts)
This simple language arts activity encourages kids to delve deeper into the emotions of characters in the story they are reading.

Pick a book with several main characters and look through it ahead of time. Make a word label for each main character (mama bear, baby bear, so on).  Sit down in group and pick one child to play each main character before you start reading.  Affix a character label to their chest with masking tape to work on literacy skills.  Then read the book to the group.

As you read the story, call upon each character to mime the actions and emotions they would be experiencing during that part of the story.  Walking in place, for example, or crying without making a sound.  The kids will have fun with it, and its a great way to bring new life into stories they know by heart.

Crazy Connections: A Storytelling Activity (All ages)
Go through a stack of magazines and clip out pictures of assorted items. It doesn’t matter what they are, and they needn’t be all the same size, just try to find several dozen nice pictures of different people, objects, or scenes.

Grab a roll of masking tape and sit down with the kids in group time. Select 3 different kids to come up and each pick out one picture from your stack. Then tape each picture on the wall in sequential order, one next to the other. Using these random pictures, children must now try to come up with a way to weave them into a narrative, almost like a detective piecing together clues. For example, maybe you have a picture of a little girl, a house in the country, and a dolphin. Kids might suggest that the little girl, who lives in a house in the country, dreams of going to the ocean to swim with the dolphins. Or switch it up and have kids try to create a connection working backwards, starting with the dolphin and getting to the girl. Once kids get the hang of it, it can be a fun and silly activity that encourages them to exercise their brain and come up with creative stories and you can do this activity week after week. You can also turn this into a writing activity by having each child write their own unique short story revolving around the pictures.