Pictorial dice (purchased Rory’s Story Cubes or DIY paper cubes) provide randomised image prompts. The child rolls 3–6 dice and weaves the images into a single story. The randomness is the point — it forces creative connection and removes the blank-page paralysis of “make up a story.”
- Have a set of 3–9 image dice. A 5-year-old starts with 3. Rory’s Story Cubes (the original 9-cube set) is the standard; DIY works just as well — paint 6 simple icons on each face of 3 wooden cubes, or print and fold paper cubes.
- Roll all 3. Look at the images together — say, “key, tree, fish.”
- Adult models the first time. “Once upon a time there was a key hidden under a tree. A fish swam up and said…” The model shows the connection is allowed to be silly.
- Child rolls again and tells their own. Accept ANY connection — silly, surreal, looping back. “And then the key turned into a fish” is a brilliant first move at age 5.
- End with "The end!" The ritual closes the cognitive loop and signals a turn boundary.
- Family round-robin is the social variant: each person rolls one die and adds a sentence; the story winds through 4–6 hands.
Variation: Build-the-Story — roll one die at a time, add a sentence per die. Dice + Story Hand — roll a die for the character (thumb), a die for the setting (index), a die for the problem (middle); then tell. DIY Photo Dice — paint plain wooden cubes with 6 family photos, drawings, or icons. Prompt Jar — write 12 prompts on slips of paper in a jar; pull 3 instead of rolling.
Requirements
- Space: Table or floor with room to roll
- Surface: Flat surface
- Materials: A set of picture-image dice (Rory's Story Cubes original set, ~$10–15; or 3–6 DIY paper cubes with hand-drawn images); optional small rolling mat to muffle the noise
- Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; works for 2–4 children at a table
- Supervision: Adult sets up and models for first 2–3 sessions; then the child can run with siblings independently
Rationale & Objective
Story generation is cognitively harder than story retelling (Hughes, McGillivray & Schmidek, 1997) because the child must both construct the macrostructure and generate the language simultaneously. Randomised prompts scaffold the hardest part — the “what shall I make a story about?” wall. Vygotsky (1978) argued play is the leading activity of preschool development because it lets children operate above their independent functional level; novel-combination tasks are a clean example. The randomness recruits creative flexibility — children must accept unrelated elements and find a coherent path through them, a skill that predicts later divergent thinking (Russ & Wallace, 2013). For language specifically, the dice externalise characters, settings, and objects (the noun slots in narrative grammar), freeing working memory for verbs, connectives, and evaluation. Honest framing — there is no large RCT of story-cube interventions specifically; the evidence base is for the underlying mechanisms (scaffolded story generation, prompted play, narrative production). The exercise sits within the broader evidence base for play-based language production (Bus et al., 1995; Nicolopoulou et al., 2015).
Progress Indicators
- Early: names the images without connecting them (“key, tree, fish — the end”); 1 sentence at most
- Developing: combines 2 images with a connector (“the key was under the tree”); story is 2–3 sentences; ends abruptly
- Proficient: combines all 3 images into a coherent story with sequence; uses “and then… so…”; has a beginning, middle, and end
- Advanced: creates 5+ sentence stories; embeds dialogue, problem, and resolution; rolls own dice and adapts the framework (“this one is the bad guy”); invents recurring characters across rolls
Safety Notes
- Don’t reject “silly” or surreal stories — the imagination is the engine
- Avoid grading or comparing siblings’ stories; everyone’s story is “the end” of their own roll
- For children with limited expressive language, start with one die only and build up
- Cap rounds at 5–10 minutes; story generation is high cognitive load and stamina is built over weeks
- For very young siblings in the home, check dice are large enough not to be a choking hazard
Hints
- Playfulness: silly voices for each character; act out the story as it’s told; once a week try “the worst story possible” challenge
- Sustain interest: rotate which dice are in play; theme nights (only “monster” stories); record and play back the audio for grandparents
- Common mistake: imposing a “real” plot (“no, the fish wouldn’t really do that”); leading the story; making the child use all rolled dice when they only want 2; spending too long in one session
- Limited materials: write 6 prompts on slips of paper in a jar — pull 3 instead of rolling; or use a smartphone’s free “story prompt” page
- Cross-domain: vocabulary; literacy (later, write the dice-roll story down); creative thinking and flexibility (executive function); social skills (cooperative round-robin)
- Progression: name dice → combine 2 dice in one sentence → combine 3 dice into 3 sentences → 5-die story with beginning / middle / end → child draws their own dice → invents dice-based games for siblings
Sources
- Hughes, D., McGillivray, L. & Schmidek, M. (1997). *Guide to Narrative Language: Procedures for Assessment*. Thinking Publications
- Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). *Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes*. Harvard University Press
- Bus, A. G., van IJzendoorn, M. H. & Pellegrini, A. D. (1995). "Joint book reading makes for success in learning to read: A meta-analysis on intergenerational transmission of literacy." Review of Educational Research, 65(1), 1–21
- Russ, S. W. & Wallace, C. E. (2013). "Pretend play and creative processes." American Journal of Play, 6(1), 136–148
- Nicolopoulou, A. (2002). "Peer-group culture and narrative development." In S. Blum-Kulka & C. Snow (Eds.), *Talking to Adults* (pp. 117–152). Erlbaum
- Petersen, D. B. & Spencer, T. D. (2012). "The Narrative Language Measures: Tools for language screening, progress monitoring, and intervention." Perspectives on Language Learning and Education, 19(4), 119–129
- Common Core SL.K.4 — describe familiar people, places, things, and events; W.K.3 — narrate a single event (oral precursor)
- Head Start ELOF — P-LIT 4 (engages with text and stories); P-LC 7 (complex language use)