Activity time: 15 minutes

Materials for Activity

• Shoe boxes for all participants
• Masking tape
• Play sand, modeling clay, blue paper, glue, toothpicks, and color markers for participants
• A copy of Leader Resource 4, Take-Home Story Theater
• Sealable, plastic sandwich bags, two for each participant
• Optional: Copies of story, "Mussa and Nagib," for all participants to take home

Preparation for Activity

• Collect empty shoe boxes in advance. You may wish to ask parents by email or via a story to provide an empty shoe box for their children. Make your request to parents at least a week before this session.
• Use Leader Resource, Take-Home Story Theater, to assemble the materials the children will need.
• Consider whether you might like to photocopy the story, "Mussa and Nagib," for children to take home. A summary of the story is included in the Taking It Home section; if you plan to distribute the Taking It Home handout to families, you probably do not need to also provide the entire story.

Description of Activity

Invite the children to assemble their own story theaters to take home and share the story, "Mussa and Nagib," with their families.

Settle children at work tables. Make sure every child has a shoe box. Help children cut along the side folds of their shoe boxes, fold the sides down, and tape them to the work tables. This way, children can fold the shoe box back up and put the lid on it to take it home.

Distribute sealed sandwich bags of play sand and modeling clay to participants. Explain that they can use some clay now for the figures of Mussa and Nagib, but should save enough to make the rock at home. Tell them to keep the sandwich bag of play sand sealed until they need it to tell the story at home.

Invite the children to decorate their story theaters as they wish. Children can glue a blue strip of paper down to make the river. They can shape the two clay characters.

Allow them to go inspect the story theater you used to tell the story, if it helps them get ideas. As you visit individual children at work, revisit parts of the story with them as you see how they have decorated their story theater.

Children can do as much or as little of the work on their story theaters as they like, in this session. Just make sure they can conveniently take home all the pieces they will need to complete their story theaters at home.

If there is time in the session, allow the children to pair up and begin telling the story to one another, using their own story theaters.

Including All Participants

Some children will want to spend a great deal of time decorating their theater while others will engage more with the characters or retelling the story. If a child is physically unable to assemble a story theater, they may be able to help other children by making rocks of clay for them. A child who finishes quickly may be engaged to help a mobility-limited child make a story theater.