Tell a Story: An Exhausted Parent’s Method of Connecting with Kids

My kids love when I tell stories to them. My mom and grandma were amazing at it. They had such good imaginations and came up with the coolest stories when I was a kid. And I don’t know how they did it. I certainly didn’t get the same story telling genes they were blessed with. Mostly I am exhausted, but I want so much to connect with my kids and create memories with them like I have with my mom and her stories. But because I lack the creativity to actually come up with good stories, I thought that I would go to the experts. My kids lack no creativity or imagination whatsoever. Thus was born the “Tell a Story” activity.

If you have ever played Pass-the-Story or Story Round-Robin, this is very similar. We used this for homeschooling as well for our language arts lesson one day! We discussed what setting, characters, plot, and climax meant in terms of creating a story. I then created the setting, character names, plot, and climax for the kids to work with. If your kids would enjoy figuring that out on their own, by all means, let them! That is less brain power for you! Then one child would start the story with one sentence. Another child would follow and we would continue this until our story was complete! If they got stuck, I would step in and try to get the story back on track. Or if you only have one child, you can do this activity with them! While the kids told the story, I was just typing it up on my computer to read back to them. They loved hearing what they had written and were laughing so much, kind of like my memories of playing Mad Libs!

We plan to make this a regular game that we play together. And what adds to the fun is making a fun picnic for the kids to enjoy while they think of their story. We just laid a blanket on the living room floor and laid out a charcuterie plate. I love this activity because I get to sit and relax while actually spending time with my kids and creating a memory that we will all enjoy. Because I don’t know about you, but I feel like the life is getting sucked out of me when I have to play “Pretend Kitty Cats.”