A child lying on a cosy rug drawing woodland characters in a sketchbook after story time, with a closed storybook, soft toys, and fairy lights nearby

5 Ways to Extend the Magic After Story Time

The book is closed. The last page has been turned. But the story — the real story, the one that has taken root in your child's imagination — is just beginning.

One of the most wonderful things about a truly great children's book is what happens after you finish reading it. The characters linger. The world stays vivid. Questions bubble up. Your child wants to talk about it, draw it, act it out, return to it. This is the sign of a story that has done its job — not just entertained, but genuinely captured the imagination.

At Woodland Wonder Tales, we design our books with this in mind. We want Hariët and Finnigan to live in your child's world long after the reading lamp is switched off. Here are five of our favourite ways to extend the magic of story time — activities that deepen engagement, spark creativity, and turn a single reading into a rich, ongoing experience.

1. Colour the Characters

There is no better way to deepen a child's relationship with a story character than to colour them. When a child picks up a pencil and decides what colour Hariët's spines should be, or how the light falls on Finnigan's fur, they are making creative decisions that are also acts of ownership. They are saying: this character is mine. I know them. I have a vision for them.

This is why our colouring pages are among our most beloved products. They take the characters from the page and put them in a child's hands — literally. The act of colouring slows a child down, encourages close observation, and creates a physical object that they can keep, display, or give as a gift.

Start with our free woodland colouring page PDF or our free Hariët and Finnigan colouring page — both are beautifully detailed and completely free to download and print. For a more comprehensive colouring experience, our Hariët and Finnigan Colouring Book offers a full collection of scenes from the woodland world.

For creative techniques and ideas to make the most of your colouring session, see our post on printable woodland colouring pages: the perfect screen-free activity.

2. Act It Out

Children are natural dramatists. Give them a story they love and they will perform it — with or without an audience, with or without props, with or without any encouragement from the adults around them. This impulse to embody a story is one of the most powerful forms of engagement a child can have with a narrative, and it deserves to be celebrated and supported.

After reading a Woodland Wonder Tales book, invite your child to act out their favourite scene. Who will play Hariët? Who will play Finnigan? What props can you find around the house — a blanket for a burrow, a torch for the forest at night, a cushion for a mossy log? The more specific and playful the setup, the more deeply children will engage.

Don't worry about accuracy or faithfulness to the text. The best story play is the kind that takes the original as a starting point and then goes somewhere new. If your child decides that Hariët and Finnigan need to rescue a lost owl who wasn't in the book, that's not a deviation from the story — it's the story growing, which is exactly what we hope for.

For older children, you might suggest writing their own scene — a new adventure for the characters, set in a part of the woodland we haven't visited yet. This kind of fan fiction is a wonderful creative exercise and a genuine act of literary engagement.

3. Create a Story Map

One of the most satisfying post-reading activities for children who love to draw is creating a map of the story's world. Where does Hariët live? Which direction is the swamp? Where does the old oak tree stand, and what lives beneath its roots? A story map invites children to think spatially about the narrative — to construct a geography for the world they've been inhabiting.

This activity develops a surprising range of skills. It requires children to recall and sequence story events, to make spatial reasoning decisions, to use symbols and labels, and to exercise creative judgment about what to include and how to represent it. It also produces a beautiful, personalised artefact that can be displayed alongside the book itself.

Provide your child with a large sheet of paper — the bigger the better — and let them lead. You might offer some prompts: "Where do you think the forest ends?" "What's on the other side of the stream?" "Is there a part of the woodland we haven't seen yet?" These questions encourage children to think beyond the text and into the world it implies.

Our post on forest animals is a wonderful companion to this activity — it gives children real-world information about the creatures in the story that they can incorporate into their maps.

4. Start a Nature Journal

Woodland stories have a unique power to make children look at the natural world differently. After reading about Hariët foraging through leaf litter or Finnigan tracking a scent through the undergrowth, children begin to notice things they might have walked past before: a spider's web catching the morning light, the tracks of a small animal in soft mud, the different shapes of leaves on different trees.

A nature journal is the perfect way to capture and celebrate these observations. Give your child a dedicated notebook — ideally one that feels special, with good paper that can handle both writing and drawing — and encourage them to record what they notice in the natural world. Drawings, pressed leaves, feathers, descriptions of what they saw and heard and smelled — all of these belong in a nature journal.

Our free printable sticker sheets are perfect for decorating nature journal pages — adding a touch of woodland magic to real-world observations. And our guide to the animals of the forest gives children the information they need to identify and learn about the creatures they encounter.

A nature journal started alongside a woodland story can become a lifelong practice — a record of a child's growing relationship with the natural world, begun in the pages of a book.

5. Cook or Bake Something From the Story World

Food is one of the most powerful ways to make a story world feel real. The woodland is full of edible things — berries, mushrooms, honey, nuts, wild herbs — and bringing these flavours into your kitchen after reading is a wonderful way to extend the sensory experience of the story.

This doesn't need to be elaborate. A simple activity like making hedgehog-shaped bread rolls, decorating biscuits with woodland animal faces, or preparing a "forest feast" of berries, nuts, and honey on toast can be enormously satisfying for children who have just spent time in the woodland world. The act of making and eating something connected to the story deepens the emotional resonance of the narrative in a way that is both delicious and memorable.

For younger children, you might focus on the sensory experience: handling different nuts and berries, smelling herbs, feeling the texture of different foods. For older children, involve them in the actual cooking — measuring, mixing, following a recipe. Either way, the connection to the story makes the activity feel magical rather than merely domestic.

Pair your woodland feast with a re-read of a favourite scene from Book 1 or Book 2, and you have the ingredients for a truly special afternoon.

Bonus: Build a Reading Ritual

Beyond any single activity, the most powerful thing you can do to extend the magic of story time is to make it a ritual. A consistent, beloved routine around reading — the same cosy spot, the same warm drink, the same signal that story time is beginning — creates a Pavlovian response in children: when these things happen, something wonderful is about to occur.

Rituals also create memories. The specific sensory details of a reading ritual — the smell of a particular candle, the feel of a favourite blanket, the sound of a parent's voice settling into a story — become associated with the stories themselves, and with the feeling of being loved and safe. These are the memories that last a lifetime.

If you haven't yet created a dedicated reading space, our guide on how to create a cosy woodland reading nook is full of practical, beautiful ideas for making story time feel truly special.

Your Woodland Story Toolkit

Everything you need to extend the magic is right here:

The story doesn't end when the book closes. It's only just beginning.

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