An Afternoon of Storytelling Games

This afternoon seven of my kids pulled me to the floor to play a game. This is not so unusual, we love games. They were excited because today was the day I promised to open some new games and game add-ons. With the 1 year old napping and the high schooler busy with her own project that left me with kids ages 3-12.

Our first game was Rory's Story Cubes. We have had three of the Rory's Story Cube sets: Original, Actions, and Voyages (links in this post are Amazon affiliate links)for four years. Just recently I had two add on dice sets delivered from Amazon. I left them sitting in view for a week and told the kids we would use them soon. Today was the day.

The add on sets are 3 dice each. Theme one is Prehistoria and includes dinosaurs. I have a lot of dinosaur lovers in this house.

Theme two is Intergalactic (for my Star Wars and Star Trek fans). Kids got to choose a couple dice and we went around the circle rolling our dice and telling a short story on the spot.

It is always funny! There are other ways to play, such as a continuing story where each person picks up where the last left off, but for today we kept it to individual story telling. The boxes for the regular sets include ideas for different game play as well.

After two rounds of Rory's Story Cubes I brought out our newest game addition, Story Time Dice. I found three sets on Amazon:

• Story Time Dice
• Scary Tales
• Fairy Tales 

These are different than Rory's Story Cubes in some interesting ways, so I wanted to explain that a little.

• Not just 6 sided - The dice in each Story Time Dice set are varied - 6, 8, 12, and even 20 sides. The dice are also bigger, which is nice in a house with little children.
• Each dice is a specific story category. Hero, villain, monster, setting, obstacle, ending, tools, twists, prizes, and even vehicles, depending on the set. This is wonderful because it supports my younger children as well as my older ones in creating a more detailed story.

• There is a printed guide identifying the many graphics on the dice. This is helpful too - both in recognizing what they rolled (they are sorted by dice category) and in making visual how to spell these words - in case your child is using the story cubes during a writing activity instead of an oral game.
• The printed guides also include different game play ideas, more detailed than those of Rory's Story Cubes.

For the Story Time Dice we tried a couple game options. One that was especially fun was Hero vs. Villain. Two children divided the dice from one set between them. One had the dice for Heroes, the other had the one for Villains. They both rolled their dice and the hero began telling his story. Then the villain got to take a turn adding to the story, presenting the hero with twists, turns, and unexpected events. Story telling would switch back and forth until they ran out of time or reached the end of their shared tale.

We spent about 45 minutes playing games this afternoon. It was neat to hear each child as they had to think on their feet and create stories based on the roll of the dice. We laughed a lot!

Have you ever played storytelling games with your children?