How to Make and Play With Story Stones

I've seen a lot of different versions of story stones on the internet and have always thought that they are a great idea for fostering creativity and language development. Over the last week or so I have been busy making my own. Here are my latest of about thirty or so. I think I'll stop making them for now, however they have proven to be an invaluable play resource so I'm sure that by the time my kids are grown we'll have hundreds of story stones scattered around the house.

Our collection includes people, animals, trees, clothing, household objects, toys, food, transportation, places (e.g. park), weather (e.g. rain), elements (e.g. water) and a sun for day and stars on a black stone for night.

I haven't included any fairy tale or magical images such as wings or wands as I plan to start using this type of story telling to teach my kids how to come up with positive and realistic solutions to their problems. For instance if a character is sad because it starts raining while he is at the park, we will look for realistic solutions like sitting under a tree until it stops and then jumping in puddles rather than just waving a magic wand to make it go away. While there will always be room in our house for wildly imaginative play, I would like to model some positive problem solving skills in our story telling.

I painted our stones by hand in acrylic paint. You don't have to be an artist to do your own. Simple shapes and patterns work fine, in fact I think they look better.

Before I even had the chance to explain story stones to my two-year-old she was using them to make up her own stories. They just seem to lend themselves to story telling. In the picture above she was recounting a story about going to the park with Daddy. 

Sometimes she will bring me the bag of stones and we will pull one out at a time and make up a story using the images as prompts until the story reaches its natural conclusion. My favorite stories so far have been about her little brother getting in trouble for eating a sandwich in bed and Daddy going on a train wearing a tutu. I can't wait find out where the next stone will take us.