I went to my favorite local toy store with Jelly yesterday. It's one of those stores that carry incredibly cute boutique clothes and wonderfully expensive toys, all that you want your kid to have. If you don't have a game plan before going in, your wallet might be in trouble. They even let your children explore and play with all the toys.....they are devious geniuses.
I had a game plan. I was going to buy gifts for two good friends, mostly from the clearance rack, because frankly their original prices are extremely high. I even knew what I wanted to buy. I was doing well, until I overheard one of the owners selling some "story dice and cards" to another customer. I was intrigued. Cookie asks for me to tell her stories all the time. She likes to tell me what to tell about and should I not tell it exactly how she imagines, my demanding monster gets upset....sometimes to the point of tears. These stories began as "Mommy and Marcey" stories. Stories about a little girl I grew up with and the mishaps and escapades we got ourselves into together. They all had a common theme, us doing something we weren't supposed to, and one of us, or both of us getting hurt or punished. Cookie loves them, but like all things Cookie, she likes to be in control. She has to be boss on how the stories should go. These story cards and dice sounded like a way for me to get her to think outside the box...and to come up with new themes and characters. Lately she wants Marcey to be jealous of Ginger about getting a certain toy. In reality, Marcey always got the cool toys because her parents had more money than mine did and I was always jealous of her.
So I bought both, the dice and the cards. Really both are cool ideas.
The story dice have nine dice, each with six pictures, like a phone or a bell, so when you roll them, you get many different combination of images to help you tell a story. You can of course use all or some of them to tell a story. But the idea of Cookie telling me the general theme and players and then letting the dice help in the development of the story seemed like a good idea.
The story cards are for younger kids about 3 to 5 years old and have a similar idea. There are 32 cards with images on them. The images are fairytale like. A Castle, a princess, a king, a little boy, and a witch. Again, the idea is to use the cards to help build a story. You can use all or some.
Cookie loves them. As a result, I spent most of yesterday telling story after story. While I love that she gets to build her imagination, she is not ready or she does not want to participate in the telling of the story herself. We spent three hours, yes three hours playing with them until I called "uncle". I just could not play anymore. I think it's cute that she calls the story cubes, "sugar cubes" and was touched when she laid out the cards to tell her sister a story.
I am a little hesitant to bring them out again today, as I am not ready to tell stories and be imaginative for three hours today. The teacher in me loves them, the tired Mom in me may need to warm up to them, or set a timer.
No comments:
Post a Comment