Story Stones

My seven year old daughter LOVES to read and reads all of the time. If all of her books were destroyed she would be devastated. My five year old son likes bedtime stories but make them funny with some good rhyming or you’ll lose him (The children’s book about the 1847 potato famine in Ireland gave him a headache last night). The one year old likes books and frankly it doesn’t matter because I love to read children’s books. As the other two outgrow sitting and listening to me, he as the last of the children will be forced to be my reading companion whether he likes it or not!

Besides reading to the kids, I have a stack of blank books that we sit down together and write stories in. Each person takes a turn writing a different page and in turn we end up with a book that goes from dinosaurs eating people to princesses dancing with the dinosaurs.

The other day, to mix things up a bit, I told the kids to grab some rocks from their rock garden. (My kids collect rocks when we go places. We have a few rocks from hikes we’ve been on and the beach but they also collect from grocery store parking lots or anywhere they see a good rock.)

With the rocks gathered and my caddy of paints and paintbrushes set up I told them we were going to make Story Stones. Their eyes lit up with excitement at the prospect of combining two of their loves…Rocks and writing stories…

We went in our usual fashion of taking turns telling the story but this time while the kids spun their tale, I painted a rock with the key characters or items pertinent to the story. I painted a princess, banana, God, unicorn, present, zebra, coconut, monster, math book, boulder and cotton candy. The story was in their usual bizarre nature and I liked it because it made complete sense to them. It was not even remotely strange to pair up princesses and God.

When we were done I explained they can continue to make up all kinds of stories using these. That afternoon the kids played for hours while I listened from the kitchen. It was good and only one fight broke out when Bency wanted the unicorn to stab the princess with it’s horn. Iris found this completely unacceptable and demanded a retraction.

I knew we had a hit on our hands when Bency requested to play Story Stones by himself yesterday. Bency make up a story without the aid of his mother or sister???? Amazing!!! That is until I peeked in on him a while later when I heard strange noises coming from the dining room. Bency had made up a makeshift shuffleboard game and was sliding the rocks across the table making them bump in each other and sending them flying.

Story Stones are wonderful. They appeal to boys and girls of all ages. They invoke creativity. They can be used solo or with many. Make some today. Do NOT hold me accountable for damage to your dining room.