Easy Kids Activity: Tell Me a Story with Magnets

While online gift shopping I came across this nice idea for a storytelling game. "Story cubes" are dice with pictures on them, roll the dice and kids have to make up a story based on the images they rolled. Well of course why buy when you can make your own story telling game. This type of activity is easy and it helps kids build creativity skills, pre-reading skills, and a great way to keep them busy so you can get things done. Like my dinner...



Making dinner can be a challenging time. The Kids like to stay with me in the kitchen so I include them in the cooking whenever I can. But then terse times I need to occupy them. My younger son was playing with his Refrigerator magnets making the pieces "talk" to each other. When I asked a few questions about his story, eureka! A new Kids activity struck me.
We have many, many, many magnets that we have collected through the years. Alphabet letters, Melissa and Doug animals and dinosaur magnets, vacation souvenirs, a farm book with farm animals, and responsibility / rewards chart magnets. I keep things in a storage "just in case bin" or circulate some of these through so we don't get bored with them. This is a sample of the magnets from the fridge. 

Easy Kids Activity: Tell Me a Story Magnets, a photo by areyousureaboutthatblog on Flickr.

Our Tell Me a Story Game:

1. I grab 3 - 4 magnets from the storage bag and put them in a row on the fridge.

2. We talk about the picture on each magnet.

3. Then the kids "take a minute to think about a story using these 3 magnets." (At first, I had to make up the stories so the kids would get the idea of the game. Since about a dozen times playing, the kids now get more detailed, and very elaborate in their stories. Which may require more "thinking time.")

4. When my younger son is ready, he starts telling me his story.

5. PARENTS NEED TO LISTEN. Even though I am cooking (usually), I always stop to fully listen to the story. Its often short and I can spare the 1-2 minutes it takes him to tell me.

6. Then its moms turn to make up a story. I go last because I have found over time that my son simply imitates my story on his turn and just changes a few things around.

7. Pick new magnets and keep "story telling."




Variations:

-- Sometimes the kids pick their own magnets to use.

-- Or they pick some out for mom to make up a story.

-- Baby girl likes to take the magnets and "act out" her stories. Or she repeats segments of the story like "Roars" when my son said the Lion Roared at the Farmer. She is learning the game early on and will be vary familiar as her vocabulary grows.

-- We often put criteria on the story depending on what new things are happening in our lives. For example we have required many stories to "take place in Japan," when my husband and I were traveling there. Or my son makes the characters repeat an activity he learned in school that day.

The options are endless. We have also made up stories using the action figures we take to the car, and we have even started making up our own endings to the books we read at home. That's been really fun.

I hope we have introduced an easy, low-cost, game that's fun for kids.

Make Mistakes. Breath, Reflect. and Laugh.Out.Loud