We love publishing a children’s story magazine, but we don’t stop there. We believe that stories are powerful tools for extending learning and for inspiring play. Hence every Storytime issue comes with suggestions for activities, plus puzzles, games and free printables, comprising masks, finger puppets and colouring. With every issue of Storytime, we hope to give our readers a richer and rewarding story experience – something beyond reading.

For schools who subscribe to Storytime, we also create a story-focused teaching resource pack. These are filled with lesson ideas, ranging from literacy and maths to science and art. Each pack also comes with comprehension and writing activities to help children understand the bones of a story. Even better, it will help them become confident storytellers in their own right.

To show you how rewarding extending your reading sessions can be, we’re making our latest free printable Golden Goose Pack (usually only emailed to schools, home educators and libraries), widely available to all our readers. You can download it here: Free Golden Goose Pack.

We’re also sharing some simple ideas on how to get the most from this classic fairy tale in a fun and educational way. We hope it inspires you!

Goosing Around with our Golden Goose Free Printables

1. 1. First, read the Golden Goose story. If you don’t have Storytime Issue 33 already, you can get hold of it in our back issue shop.
   2. Start off with the activities in our magazine. Complete the counting puzzle and find the golden feathers in our wonderfully detailed centrespread illustration by Olga Demidova. You can extend on this by adding more ‘spot it’ and ‘count it’ challenges. How many houses are there? How many people are wearing hats? Can you spot two round windows? What about the white dog?
   3. Now download our free printable Golden Goose masks and act out the story. We’ve got a goose, Fritz and the three sisters. We have more printable masks if you need to add more characters to the goosey line-up, including Hercules, Merlin, King Arthur, Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk, a giant, Goldilocks, and Snow White. They can all stand in for other characters. They’re available to download here.
   4. Invent new characters to join the goose parade. In the Golden Goose, there are stallholders, a fishmonger, a circus performer, and a royal official. Who else might you bump into a bustling city? Write a list.
   5. Download our free Golden Goose teaching resource pack. It has loads of lesson ideas, but also story sequencing, storyboards, creative writing prompts, puzzles, maths, map-making, feather crafts, colouring and drawing!

Our pack also comes with a Goose Factsheet, so you can read the story then get outdoors and do some goose spotting. At this time of year, you might even spot your own little golden geese in the form of Canada Geese goslings, which have wonderful yellow feathers. This is a great way to bring the story to life and conclude your story session.

Sharing a story with a child is a very precious thing, but delving into it even further can give your child’s learning and literacy a positive boost – at home as well as in the classroom.

If you enjoy our Golden Goose pack, we have other free printables available to download on our Storytime for Schools website, including packs to help you create your own fairy tales, fables, myths, legends, poetry and even your own magazine. Check them out here.

Plus, don’t forget our usual free printables page. This month, we have a brilliant Alphabet Zoo factsheet and activity pack, and a bonus pack for our wonderful leopard story. It’s a truly enjoyable way to learn!

If you’re a school and are interested in subscribing or want to know more about Storytime and our free resource packs, please drop us a line at hello@storytimemagazine.com – we’d love to hear from you!

 

Hope you all have some good goosey fun over half term!