Spark: Once Upon a Jar is a group storytelling experience. Stephen is travelling around to many different primary schools with his suitcase of stories and smells – and he also invites the children to make up brand-new stories together. Everyone in the room becomes a storyteller. After the experience, we invite all students who have enjoyed Once Upon a Jar to contribute to our online Suitcase of Stories.

Share your Stories

Did your class experience Spark: Once Upon a Jar? We would love to share your stories, too!

Your contributions can be written, drawn, transcribed by a teacher, or spoken aloud and recorded as video or sound files. They can be collaborative or individual stories, immediately inspired by the experience, or created in the classroom later on. The only limit is your imagination!

Or perhaps you haven’t made a story. Perhaps you’ve created something else entirely. We would love to see and share whatever your class has made or done in response to Once Upon a Jar.

Fill out this form to add your creations to the Suitcase.

A collaborative story from 'Our Smelly Stories' class response to Once Upon a Jar by Reception students, Nazareth Catholic College, 2022.

One day, I got a chocolate. It was a chocolate-flavoured lollipop. I got to eat my lollipop instead of sausages! Lollipops are my favourite candy.

Then I ate a chocolate covered banana! Then I smelled a candle that smelt like kitty cat heads that were wearing a shower cap.

But after all that I was still hungry for the sausages! From then on, I had to eat my dinner before my lollipops.

The End

A collaborative Story from 'Our Stories with Stephen' class response to Once Upon a Jar by Reception students, Nazareth Catholic College, 2022.

One day, there was a magic jar.

The jar had a scent inside. Then Hello Kitty turned everyone pink! And Stephen told us about Hello Kitty and that she had two cats and the other cat was wearing shoes.

And there was a big man and smaller man, and a little jar of sand and a big jar of sand.

Then Elsa turned everyone blue!

And then they all touched Kaiwen and turned back to their normal colours.

The End

A collaborative Story from 'Our Stories with Stephen' class response to Once Upon a Jar by Reception students, Murray Bridge North Primary School, 2023.

Well there was a little boy called Jeremy and a little girl called Elemny and they used to play all day together in their cubby house and one day they found themselves right out to sea in the ocean, bobbing along in their cubby house.

Jeremy woke up and looked out the window and said to Elemny “wake up Elemny. Wake up. Look out the window”. Elemny looked and there was ocean as far as they could see and she said “where are we, where are we Jeremy?” “We must be on the ocean Elemny. I wonder how did we get here?” “The wind must have blown us out here onto the ocean”, said Elemny.

Then Elemny said “I’m hungry”, and Jeremy said “what do you want to eat?” “Lemons”, she said. Jeremy said “I don’t know if there are any lemons in the ocean” but Elemny said “they are in the shells”. So the two of them dived into the ocean and found some shells and they brought them back to the bobbing cubby and when they looked in the shells all the lemons came out, all the lemons you want. And they started to eat them but they were too sour and Jeremy went blooouugh and back out came a half eaten lemon. But suddenly a fish came out of the sea, slurped up the thrown up lemon and jumped back into the ocean.

Jeremy got an idea. He thought I like to eat fish why don’t we blooough - throw up again and get these disgusting fish and so Elemny threw up a lemon and along came a disgusting fish and they grabbed it before it jumped back in the ocean. Then they put the disgusting fish on a fishing line and they threw it in and caught a much bigger fish. Then they made a fire and they cooked the big fish and had some dinner.

After that they began to wonder “but how are we going to get back to land” and just as they were wondering about it, the wind started blowing again and blew them back to land.

The End.