How to Make Story Stones and Different Theme Ideas

Story stones are a fun way to change up your storytelling with kids, whether you have a set that specifically goes with a story you like to tell or you have a bunch of rocks with different images on them you use to tell a story.

When my daughter was little we didn’t have story stones but we did have storytelling dice, which you roll and then make up a story that includes all the images.

Making your own story stones is a lot of fun, and this post from The Wild Cherry Farm is a good overview of how to make them and how to play with them. Older kids can help paint or draw on the stones, while younger kids can offer ideas for the subject matter of the stones.

The post also has some good ideas for ways to play with the stones, such as randomly drawing a set amount from a bag, telling a story with the stones in the order you pulled them, or working together to tell a story picking one stone at a time.

In addition to general images like the sun, rain, a princess, a house, things of that nature, you might want to consider different themes for your story stones. If you’re making them for home use you can make stones that cover your child’s current obsession like dinosaurs, butterflies or things of a particular color.

Kristin Marcelli made a bunch of little story stones with simple Sharpie drawings of different things on them, and her post includes a good list of things you might want to include on your stones. These tiny ones would be fun to add to your small world play or even use to play with playdough and other sensory activities.

I love this set from Little Lifelong Learners that uses stickers instead of painting, because that’s an easy way to get a themed set (which you might also use in a sensory bin when doing a unit study or week on that theme).

Little Pine Learners has some great ideas for story stone sets and how to use them in the classroom. I love these seasonal sets, but they also have ideas for using them for sequencing (you tell a story and the kids pick the stones that tell the story in order) and more.

Homeschool Preschool turns story stones into an alphabet activity with an image for every letter of the alphabet. These can be used for storytelling, learning letters and the words for things and lots more.

I did a post earlier this year with activities and ideas for teaching the alphabet, but a lot or learning letters and recognizing them just has to do with seeing them and working with them a lot.

That means coloring, tracing, identifying things that start with different letters and more.

One way to reinforce the letters is through little activity books like these cute printable alphabet books from Life Over Cs.

These are available for free when you subscribe to her newsletter, and I’d say that’s well worth it if you have a little one (or a group of little ones!) working on the alphabet and letter recognition.

Each mini book includes a collection of things that start with that letter to color, color and read with words that start with the letter, tracing the letter, finding the letter in a grid and other coloring pages with objects that start with that letter.

These little books are super useful reinforcing the different letters and giving kids different activities related to the letters.

If you do a letter of the day or letter of the week you can use a new book for each one, and then keep the copies in your reading center or in a basket where kids can look at them again.

And of course you can add in all the other letter activities you like, go on a scavenger hunt for items that start with that letter, read alphabet books, practice writing letters in rice or with pompoms or playdough or whatever sensory activities you like.

You can grab the free printables when you enter you email address at Life Over Cs, and check out her other great alphabet resources and activities while you are over there.

Do you have favorite activities for teaching letters to kids? I’d love to hear about them!

[Photo: Life Over Cs]

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