I have this game I bought a couple years ago to use for the storytelling class I was developing at the time.

Looking for something new to do with the girls (I’m experimenting with letting Melody skip naps) I pulled it out and tried on the fly to see if I could adapt it to their level.

The gist of it is to tell a story using the elements shown on your dealt cards to reach the ending written on your “happily ever after” card.  Complicated to explain, simple enough to do.  With a little practice.

Anyway, I only got so far as to say it’s about telling a story from a card and laying out three “place” cards as examples when Natasha said, “A forest!  I have a story for that one!”  And Melody picked up the Island and said, “I can tell a story from this one!”

So I put away the other cards and came to the computer to write down what they told me.

I couldn’t type nearly fast enough; certainly not enough to catch the inflection and pauses that (seriously!) added so much to the basic stories their words expressed.  But it was only our first time, so I hope we’ll both get better at this.

Natasha’s story:

Once upon a time there was a princess and one day her father who had a beard wanted her to go to the forest.

Now, the princess didn’t quite want to go, but her father insisted because he wanted her to go so she had to go.  But because it was a dangerous place ….he made a good solution they would both go to the forest.
…

Still the king would protect.

They all loved their educational ride through the forest and one day they soon died from a very bad forest fire from a dragon that burned the whole huge forest.

Melody’s story:

Once upon a time there was a king, an island, who wanted his queen to go to the dangerous land of the deep, deep, deep stream of futures.  And there’s trolls in the water.

So the king went himself and killed all the trolls and then he walked silently through the water until he came to his home again.

The end.

“That’s the short story,” she finished, in her normal voice.