A picture can be the beginning of a story without telling you what must happen next. Choose a character, invent a place and take turns adding one small idea. Your child can speak, gesture, draw or choose between suggestions. The story can be as short as a few turns.

Use Storybook cards as starting pictures, then choose what happens with your child. The story you make is your own.

Choose a character and a place

Storybook characters include Jewelwing, Snowmantle and Coralette. Breatho, the First Friend, is also in the set. Put out one or two pictures and invite your child to choose who the new story will follow.

Then choose a place together. It might be a doorway, a garden, a mountain or somewhere your child invents. You can draw two possible places and let them point, or ask them to tell you where to make a mark on the page.

An opening could be, “In our made-up story, Jewelwing finds a surprising doorway.” Another family might choose Coralette waiting for a visitor. Choose an opening that makes you both curious about what happens next.

Add one idea per turn

  1. Start with where the character is.
  2. Add one thing the character notices or wants to do.
  3. Let the other person choose what changes.
  4. Decide whether to continue, repeat a favourite part or finish.

A turn does not need a full sentence. A drawn line might become a path. Pointing to a second card might introduce another character. An adult can put words around a gesture, then check the idea: “Would you like Snowmantle to arrive here, or somewhere else?”

Try accepting the contribution before adding your own. If your child says that a door leads to another door, you can explore that. There is no rule requiring an exciting problem, a rescue or a lesson at the end.

Use a card label as an optional idea

Jewelwing’s label is “Still wings”, Snowmantle’s is “Frosty breath” and Coralette’s is “Floaty breath”. You can borrow a word from a label as a story prompt, or simply look at the picture. You do not have to turn each label into an action your child performs.

For a quieter turn, draw three spaces for beginning, middle and ending. Place a picture beside a space and add your own sketch. If your child prefers arranging pictures to talking, the arrangement itself can be their contribution.

Choose an ending together

Ask whether the story should finish now or have one more turn. It can end with a character arriving somewhere, deciding to wait or doing an ordinary small thing. Give your child the option to name the story or leave it untitled.

If you want to keep it, an adult can write down the words or save the paper drawing. Let your child choose a place to keep the drawing if they want to return to it. You can also put the pictures away and make a different story next time.

Storybook contains 346 cards, including the four characters named here. Its purchase includes the set’s printable files and app access; other sets are separate purchases. Explore the card sets and choose Storybook to preview the collection before choosing pictures for your next story.