Roll-a-Story — Story Stones, Cubes & "And Then…?"

Help the child make up a brand-new story — not retell a known one. Three easy engines: roll picture dice (or pull “story stones” from a bag) and weave whatever images come up into a tale; play “and then…?” where you each add one line to a growing story; or simply invite “tell me a story you’ve never told before.” The random images and the back-and-forth do the heavy lifting, so the child supplies the imagination, not a blank-page struggle.

  1. Pick an engine. Story stones: draw simple pictures (a moon, a dog, a key, a wave) on smooth pebbles or cards. Story dice: use picture cubes or make paper ones. Or go prop-free with “once upon a time…”.

  2. The child draws or rolls a few images and starts a story that includes them: “Once there was a dog who found a key…”

  3. Keep it moving with “and then…?” Take turns adding a line each if the child stalls — you add a twist, they add the next, building together.

  4. Follow the child’s lead wherever it wanders; a story about a dog can become a story about the moon. Originality matters more than logic.

  5. Celebrate the finished tale — give it a title, retell it at dinner, draw a picture of the best bit, or “write” it down as the child dictates.

Variation: act the new story out with toys or as a mini-play (a nod to Vivian Paley’s storytelling and story-acting). Theme the stones (all animals, all weather). Or scribe the child’s dictated story word-for-word and read it back — being an author is thrilling.

Requirements

  • Space: Anywhere — table, floor, bedtime, back seat
  • Surface: A spot to lay out stones or dice; none for the spoken version
  • Materials: Story stones (drawn pebbles or cards) or picture dice — homemade is fine; or nothing at all
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child for the back-and-forth; a group can pass the story around the circle
  • Supervision: Light; closer if small stones are used near a child who mouths objects

Rationale & Objective

Making up original stories is narrative creativity, and Vygotsky (1930/2004) explains the mechanism: imagination recombines elements of real experience, so random images (a key, a wave) give the child concrete pieces to combine into something new. Random prompts also drive conceptual combination — joining unrelated ideas into a novel whole — a core generative mechanism in the creative-cognition tradition (Finke, Ward & Smith, 1992). The tell-it-and-act-it tradition follows Vivian Gussin Paley’s (1990) storytelling and story-acting curriculum, in which children dictate original stories that are honored and enacted; a UK evaluation of a Paley-derived “Helicopter” approach observed gains in children’s communication, confidence, and engagement, though as a small qualitative study rather than a controlled trial (Cremin et al., 2013). It targets the subdomain marker “tells original stories (not just retelling known ones)” and the EYFS goal of inventing, adapting, and recounting narratives.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: names what’s on each stone or offers disconnected fragments rather than a connected story; may retell a familiar tale instead of inventing; relies on you to carry it
  • Developing: links two or three images into a simple original sequence with a beginning and an end; uses ‘and then’ to keep going; needs prompts to move along
  • Proficient: tells a coherent original story with a character, a problem, and a resolution, weaving in the rolled images; sustains it with little help and adds their own twists
  • Advanced: invents elaborate, surprising stories with several characters, a clear arc, and inventive twists; uses story language and feelings; can retell or act out the tale and keep it consistent

Safety Notes

  • Homemade story stones and small dice are choking hazards for under-threes — keep them away from younger siblings and use larger pieces if a toddler is nearby
  • Use non-toxic paint or markers on stones and seal them, and check pebbles for sharp edges before play
  • Keep it pressure-free — a child put on the spot may freeze, so model freely, let them pass, and build the skill gently over many days
  • Steer very scary invented content away from bedtime if your child’s imagination tends to keep them awake, and redirect to a calmer twist

Hints

  • Playfulness: dive in with dramatic voices and gasps (‘and then — oh no! — what happened next?!’), and let the story get gloriously silly. Your willingness to follow a ridiculous plot frees the child to invent.
  • Sustain interest: make new story stones together as its own craft, theme the set to current obsessions (dinosaurs, space), and rotate engines — dice one day, prop-free the next — so it stays fresh.
  • Common mistake: correcting the plot’s logic or steering it to ‘make sense’ shuts down invention — follow the child’s wandering lead; and don’t demand a polished story, since fragments now grow into arcs over weeks.
  • Limited space / no equipment: ‘and then…’ needs nothing and turns a car ride or a wait into a story; one die or a handful of drawn cards is a whole story kit.
  • Cross-domain: sequencing events builds early math (first, next, last) and comprehension; new story words grow vocabulary; acting it out adds dramatic play and gross-motor; dictating it links to early writing and composition.
  • Progression: name and connect two images → tell a short story with a beginning and end → add a problem and a resolution → include several characters and a twist → act out or dictate the finished story for someone else.

Sources

  • Paley, V. G. (1990). The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter: The Uses of Storytelling in the Classroom. Harvard University Press
  • Cremin, T., Swann, J., Flewitt, R., Faulkner, D. & Kucirkova, N. (2013). Evaluation Report of MakeBelieve Arts Helicopter Technique of Storytelling and Story Acting. The Open University / MakeBelieve Arts
  • Finke, R. A., Ward, T. B. & Smith, S. M. (1992). Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications. MIT Press
  • Vygotsky, L. S. (1930/2004). “Imagination and creativity in childhood.” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, 42(1), 7–97
  • UK EYFS — Expressive Arts and Design — Being Imaginative and Expressive ELG (invent, adapt and recount narratives and stories)
  • Head Start ELOF — Goal P-ATL 13 (child uses imagination in play and interactions with others)
  • HighScope KDI 43 (pretend play)