Jim Tripp send me this excellent story and gave me permission to publish it here. It has everything except a plot, and shows how a lot of fun can be found in just the creation of images and not worrying so much about a problem with three locations (which most of us never get to anyway, right?).
(These are great targets for PQA, by the way – hunts and shoots. If the kids have been trained in PQA, they will immediately start making up stuff like they hunt bears in the Fall in the mountains with skate boards. So make sure to start the class with plenty of PQA, and then add it in later in the story if it can be made to fit in somewhere.)
Notice also how simple this script is:
Hunting Season
(The 4 Seasons)
hunts/hunts them
shoots
Joe hunts all year. In the Fall, Joe hunts deer. He hunts them with a cucumber. He shoots seeds at them with the cucumber.
In the Winter, Joe hunts Frosty the Snowman. He hunts him with a pencil. He shoots small ears at him with the pencil.
In the Spring, Joe hunts unicorns. He hunts them with his nose. He shoots boogers at them with his nose.
In the Summer, Joe hunts girls. He hunts them with his mouth. He shoots kisses at them with his mouth.
Jim notes:
“This story works without much acting (except for the kid shooting the goofy “weapons”). As you’ll notice, there isn’t much plot or resolution. For this reason, it is more like extended PQA than it is a story. I typically tell it in the present tense for that reason. I do, however, often end up taking it to the story level, usually by expanding on one or two of the seasons, telling it as if it had happened during the last “hunting season”. The problem is obvious: Joe wants to get the thing he is hunting, and the thing he is hunting is trying to evade him (or ends up hunting Joe).
“Hunting is big at my school, so kids usually ask me how to say “hunts,” and at least a couple kids will draw a picture of them hunting on their Circling with Balls cards. It is also not viewed as inappropriate to talk about killing animals for sport or food at our school, by students or faculty. I, however, choose to not glorify that reality in my classroom, and so the “weapon” in our story is never a gun. As long as I have stated this firmly, it has never been an issue, and I think it is what makes the story fun and comfortable for everyone.”