Story Time – Games with Creativity
Do your kids love to tell stories – the crazier the better?
We know our kids do.
And we think it goes back to those first bedtime stories that we’d read to them. Bedtime routines are perfect for spending one-on-one time with kids. They cherish the dedicated time they have trading off with mom or dad to read to them or tell them stories every night.
It would start with reading stories where they could see the pictures on the pages. But as their minds developed, they’d like the original stories we could come up with on the spot because they could paint their own pictures in their mind.
One of the activities they like the most is our “and then…” story-telling game. One person starts a story and whenever they’d like to move on, they simply say “and then.” At which point the next person continues the story. And around and around it goes. We found that it’s also great for car rides and camping when you’re all nestled down in a tent.
Story-Telling Games: A Double-Review
Well, we’ve recently played a couple published story-telling games that remind us a lot of our story time. And since they’re very similar, we decided to combine our reviews of each. Each game includes a number of different ways to play. But one is played with dice and the other with cards.
Rory’s Story Cubes
The first story-telling game is published by Gamewright and includes 9 six-sided dice with a unique image on each side for a total of 54 different images.
The first statements in the rules tell you how wide open this game can be: “There are infinite ways to play with Rory’s Story Cubes. You can play solitaire or with others. Here are a few suggest ways to unleash your creativity:”
- The first way to play Rory’s Story Cubes is for a player to roll all 9 dice and then chooses one of the images to start their story. They then create a story that strings all of the 9 images together – making it as long or as short as they’d like.
- The second is to pick a theme – like “Space Travel” – and then roll all 9 dice and create a story using the images rolled.
- The third suggested way to play is for each person to take a die and take turns adding to the story. The first person rolls their die and starts the story. Then in turn players roll their die and add to the story.
Rory’s Story Cubes comes in a great, compact container that snaps closed magnetically which makes it very portable to take along with you wherever you go. If you know you’re going to be waiting in line somewhere for a while, take it along with you and play while you wait. Who knows, maybe you’ll make some friends as those next to you join in.
Tell Tale
The next story-telling game we played is published by Blue Orange Games and contains 60 double-sided cards making an assortment of 120 unique drawings. Like the first game, you can play Tell Tale in many ways. Here are the few suggested ways to play.
- Storytime – use the cards as a bedtime story. The child chooses how many cards for the storyteller to select and then the story begins. Order them the way you’d like or have the child just hand them one by one to string the story along.
- Round ‘n Round – everyone takes 4 cards and one by one the players create a story. The first player flips their first card and begins. Then the next player flips their card and continues the story. You go around and around until you’re out of cards.
- Showtime – each player takes 6 cards and instead of moving to the next player with each card, one player tells a story using all of their cards (it’s their show). When it’s the next player’s turn, they get to make up their own story with their cards.
- Storyboard – each player takes 6 cards and arranges them in the order they’d like for telling a story.
- The Stack – place all the cards in a single stack and players take turns drawing from the pile and adding to the story until all the cards have been played.
From all the suggested ways to play, our kids like to play The Stack the most. We think it’s because once they start, they just don’t want to stop. Sure it’s nice to tell a nice, short story once in a while. But they love having fun with long, elaborate stories that meander down so many different twists and turns that by the time you end your story, it’s nowhere near the same story you started with.
One great thing about both of these games is that you can really play with as many players as you’d like. Just because the containers suggest how many players can play, don’t feel limited at all.
Because these are creative, story-telling games there really is no “winner”. As such, these may simply be classified as activities rather than games. But that shouldn’t bother you at all. They’re both very sensibly priced and can help your youngsters expand their creative minds.
Thanks Gamewright and Blue Orange Games for helping foster some fun family time!
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Excellent article, as always!