Over the past several years, teachers at the West Virginia University Child Development Laboratory have used the language experience approach to develop the literacy skills of young children. To increase child involvement, a scrapbook project for 4-year-olds was conducted each Wednesday for 1 academic year. Each child received a scrapbook and crayons, markers, pens, pencils, and erasers. Children were randomly divided into groups and worked on their projects at three stations. At the first station, where the story starter group worked, the teacher planned an activity that would elicit a story from the children, and provided cues, suggested topics, or offered some sort of motivation. The children dictated stories to the teacher, who then printed them in the children's scrapbooks. At the second station, the children decided what kind of props would fit in their story, made the props, and revised their story. The third scrapbook station was set aside for acting out dictated stories. One child author served as the director, while the other children acted out the story or served as the audience. To assess the project, the children's stories were examined for conventional elements of a beginning, setting, characters, sequence, feelings, description, conversation, and an ending. The children's first stories had a median score of four of these elements. After story six, all stories maintained a median score of five or more elements. The acting out of personal stories seemed to elicit commitment from children. The project description contains 24 references and 3 figures illustrating trends in the presence of story elements. (AC)