Things they can do on their own
Ages: 7+ | Activity type: Unsupervised | Prep time: 5 mins | Activity time: 1+ hours | Cost and materials: £
Activity 1: Write your own Christmas story
Materials: Paper, pens, coloured pencils
Write or draw a Christmas story of your own and see how it might look as a movie storyboard!
By using the steps below, you can write a movie script or create a storyboard that you could cast a range of Christmas characters in. Choose a lead character like Rudolph, an Elf or even Santa himself – or create a new one of your own.
Then write a story by answering the questions below.
1. Where does the story begin?
Try describing them at home or somewhere comfortable.
2. What does your main character need?
Maybe they’ve lost something or something breaks.
3. Where do they need to go to get the thing they need?
Maybe it’s far away or in a difficult to reach place.
4. What difficulties do they have getting to the place?
There could be physical things blocking the way or other characters
stopping them.
5. Where do they end up finding the thing they need?
Maybe it was hidden away somewhere or they found it in a different place.
6. What do they have to do to get the thing they need?
They might need to spend some money or strike a bargain with someone.
7. How do they feel now they’ve found what they need?
Are they happy, tired or filled with Christmas cheer?
8. What happens when they get home?
Maybe there’s someone there to meet them, or something new that
happens when they fix a broken item.
Once you’ve got answers to the steps above, you could write it out as a story or show how it might look as a movie. To create a film strip you could fold a sheet of paper twice in half to get 8 panels. Then you can use each one of the panels to draw how the scenes in the film might look.
Activity 2: Design an attention-grabbing movie poster
Materials: Paper, pens, coloured pencils
Make a poster for your movie!
Once you’ve created your story and either written or drawn it out, you could create a poster or a book cover for the story.
When creating your poster, think about:
- The title of your story
- The hero and how they might look
- What’s the main message of your film or story?
