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.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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