Creative Play Ideas - Supporting Short Story Telling

This is a slightly different Creative Activity Blog.

Today we're talking about how to help children tell stories.

I LOVE STORIES!

Stories help us make sense of tricky things in our lives, they inspire us for ways to move forward, they help us connect with new people over shared passions, they provide an opportunity for us to express ourselves and so much more!

Every day is a little story.

Only this time we get to choose everything that happens!

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I need to preface this by saying that I’m not an author; my love of stories stems from my degree in Animation, my love of reading poetry and fiction and my love of film and TV.

And of course all of us are living stories…

Our brilliant Youngest Sonshine, Tristan, was pre-verbal until he was over 3 years old. He started his journey to spoken language through numbers and - of all the complicated things - dinosaur names! His incredible passion for numbers and dinosaurs was real fuel for encouraging him to really try to say words. He has always loved facts and wanted very much to be able to talk to me about the things he was learning through our books and apps and games and TV shows.

Once he got the hang of using words more fluently he very soon took to storytelling as a way to share some of those facts he had learned out, but I only started writing down his dictated stories when he was about 8. He turned 10 this year and has written 27 short stories now, all with characters drawn or painted to go along with them.

(By the way, I'm putting his stories together into a book when I can - it's a completely unfamiliar process for me and I suspect I may need to apply for funding or something... So please sign up for emails using the box at the top of the screen to be kept in the loop about that and if you've any advice, please email me or use the chat box here on the website!)

For Tristan, stories almost always come from a visual; usually a character he has created. He’ll get an idea for something to draw or paint and either right away or a few days later he’ll tell me he wants to tell their story. He can write and type but not nearly as fast as his brain goes for telling the story so I type while he dictates to me.

How to use this resource:

You’ll see there are 5 lists here all with a different theme.

Within each theme are a selection of relevant words to be used as prompts to stimulate imagination and progression of story.

Depending on the cognitive age and ability of the storyteller some of these words may not be appropriate, so use your knowledge of them and be selective.

My suggestion for this resource is that you print off the words, cut them out and store them in separate bags or pots with each theme labelled.

Then you can ask the author to either blindly select one or two words at random as a lucky dip or if they prefer, they can choose from each theme to build their story around.

You can of course add to this list your own suggestions and as time goes on your author may come up with new ideas as well.

For example, maybe they select from the characters collection A KNIGHT and A WIZARD, from environment A CAVE, from adjectives INVISIBLE and SPOOKY, from challenge A RIDDLE and from endings TREASURE.

Hints -

If they’re on a roll, let them roll without interruptions even if there are elements that don’t make total sense yet. In my experience a train of thought needs to go at its own speed. The couple of times I’ve started asking our storyteller something about his story mid-flow it’s been noticeably difficult for him to get back on track. Keep questions to the end when you’re reading the story back to them.
If they get stuck and start to look a bit stressed out, do suggest pressing pause and coming back to it another time. Sometimes just a 10 minute break is enough but for us, more often than not we leave it for the day.
It can be really fun to mix up the heroes and villains collections; so maybe the ogre is the hero and the fairy is the villain…

Now, you might be reading this and have a child who is non-speaking and feeling like this blog isn't for you after all - but wait! Because a child not being able to speak or write doesn't necessarily mean they won't be able to tell stories!

I've been thinking a lot about this, and I am going to try it with our eldest Sonshine - Max - as he is not conversationally verbal.

My idea is this:

To begin with, make sure you make time for reading and watching stories - it doesn't have to be every day, but personally I can't think of a day that isn't improved by a good story!
Have a go at making up little stories on the spot as you go about your day with your child. I've been known to do this quite often during mealtimes either by pretending the foods have voices or pretending to be an animal or a creature that is eating or preparing the food.
For actually trying to create a story together, try this: Find a character or theme that really excites your child. Maybe it’s Disney, maybe it’s dinosaurs, maybe it’s space, maybe it’s trains or cars. Gather a bunch of words and images related to that theme and print them out if you can - I feel like this will be more easily accessible with the physical words and pictures to play with, but if you can’t get things printed, don’t worry, put them together into a document on your device to look at together.

Let’s have a go with the example of the theme of SPACE.

Get images of planets, stars, galaxies, maybe aliens, spaceships, if they prefer pure science maybe go for the space station and satellites and astronauts.
For the words - as well as the ones I just listed - maybe also add adjectives like black, rocket, boiling, huge, amazing, dark, cold, glittery, lonely, rocky, exciting...
And verbs like launch, crash, experiment, photographing, explore, moon-walk, discover....
And some words or short sentences to describe obstacles that might come up during the story; maybe the rocket has a malfunction! Maybe they planned to go to one planet but got knocked off-course and ended up somewhere else! Maybe they had to find a way to communicate with aliens!
Go with words your child will understand; it’ll depend on their cognition level.
Once you’ve gathered your inspirational visuals, I’d recommend you begin by writing a line or two to introduce the story: Once upon a time there was an astronaut called Rebecca who dreamed of discovering a new planet…
Then you can open up the ideas for what comes next to your child. They can point to a word or image and you can find a way to write that into the story. So if the child then points to or picks up the image of the galaxy, the first location for the character would be to travel to a new galaxy, or maybe spots one with a telescopic camera on-board the spaceship…

So of course it’ll be a collaborative story, but those I think are really beautiful. If you’ve other siblings, friends or family you could welcome into the story telling session that could be really fun too - take turns to make decisions on what happens next and all write the story together.

I think it could be REALLY adorable and inspiring. Give it a go!

Learning & Development

All sensory and creative play is excellent for development: