Take Storyboard That Offline

Coloring Pages

You can create large-scale coloring pages and print them out for kids to work on. Use things like crayons, markers, or finger paints to color in (or outside of) the lines! For an extra bonus, using play-dough makes the art project 3D, and kids can practice fine motor or sculpting skills to make the base image come to life. Because you're able to customize the page, you can make it relevant to your child's interests or what you're teaching at the time. Be sure to play around with the different filters in the Storyboard Creator to get the perfect outline.

You may consider laminating some of the coloring pages, especially if you want to reuse them for play-dough art.

Story Cubes

Story cubes add an extra element of surprise to any creative writing practice. They're especially helpful when your child is struggling for a topic or idea instead of actually writing. Story cubes are easy to make, print, cut, and fold into something that can be rolled across the table or floor. The more cubes that are rolled, the more elements can be incorporated into the story, from characters, setting, weather, and items.

They can also be used for more than just creative writing!

• Vocabulary Acquisition: Create cubes with words on them. Have your child define the word and use it in a sentence. This works for foreign languages too!


• Decision Making: Put images on the cubes that are associated with different tasks, toys, or subjects. Roll the cube when your child is having trouble deciding what to do next!


• Exercise Breaks: Roll two cubes, one with numbers, one with exercises like jumping jacks and running in place. Whatever lands face up is what you do!

Travel Brochures

Sometimes traveling to a different state or country isn't possible, but it doesn't mean you can't incorporate travel into geography, history, or foreign language lessons. If you want to complete this project offline, copy one of our brochure templates, make any adjustments as desired, and print it out. Otherwise, this project can be done in the Storyboard Creator and the final project printed and folded.

Have your child do research on a particular location. Where is it? What are the important landmarks or things that differentiate it from other locations? What type of food do they eat? Once they've compiled their information, they'll be able to create their travel brochure. If you're feeling particularly adventurous with this project, have your child act as a tour guide and present their brochure!

Board Games

Creating a board game is a fun way for children to think about what makes a game (the rules, the design, and the content) and tie it in with their education. If you already play a lot of board games, which ones are your favorite? In creating a game, your child can incorporate things they enjoy about other board games, like the style of the board, the rules, the roles, or the concept. The best part about using Storyboard That to create a board game is that elements can be changed if your child decides a path needs to be moved or the colors have to be different. The games can be printed and taped onto poster board or laminated.

While the act of creating the game is a fun educational project itself, it's easy to incorporate subject-based information. Perhaps there's questions that have to be answered if you're on a certain tile. A wrong answer puts you back two spaces and a right answer lets you move ahead two spaces. If you make the game collaboratively, you can make the questions that need to be answered, or you can see what information your child thinks is important to learn or remember!

Graphing Coordinate Practice

If you're looking for a fun way to practice coordinating graphs, consider pairing it with art! You can complete any number of the steps beforehand, or have your child do the entire project themselves. If you're selecting the art, try to keep it a surprise for your child so they don't anticipate coordinate placements! Start with an image (something simple, like one of our items or clip art), regular graph paper, and a large sheet of graph paper. If you want to re-use the same large graph paper, you can laminate it and use dry erase markers.

Steps:

1. Trace the image onto the regular, letter-sized graph paper.


2. Draw X and Y axes. For more complex practice, consider putting the image in more than one quadrant!


3. Identify points where the lines of the drawing match an intersection with the graph paper and mark them.


4. Fill in details with additional points.


5. Make a list of the coordinates that you've just mapped. Mix them up so they're not in order.


6. Give the coordinates to your child along with the large-sized graph paper.


7. Have your child identify a scale that would work well for all of the coordinates and create the X and Y axes.


8. Have your child map each coordinate, then connect the coordinate points to form the image.


9. Let them add any details, like eyes or bow-ties. They've just created art from mapping coordinates!

For a more complex project, consider what would happen if the coordinates were doubled or halved? Or, what steps would have to be done to flip the image on a vertical or horizontal axis (or just shift it on the grid)? Find our grid poster template in our math section!