For Christmas, Andrew received "Rory's Story Cubes". It is a "game" that has 9 dice with different pictures on each side. There are a few ways to do it and this time, we (Andrew, Thomas and I) each had three dice and we took turns rolling the dice and we created a story starting with "Once upon a time. . .", tying all of the pictures together as we rolled them. Try to figure out what our pictures were. I don't think it is that bad considering 2/3rds of the authors are under the age of 9 (8 & 6). I did try to . . . give them something else to help make it work. I also had to keep reminding Andrew that it wasn't a real story, nor was it based on a real story. I like that these get their brains working and thinking about different ways to look at something.
So, here is our first story, we hope you enjoy!
Once upon a time, it was a dark and stormy night with a lot of lightening. There was a light bulb burned out above the door of a creepy old man, Mr. Jenkins, that everyone thought was a monster. Across the road were Farmer Snow's sheep, hiding under the large oak tree for cover from the rain. When all of a sudden, the tree was struck by lightening . Luckily, the sheep ran out from under the tree just in the nick of time, well almost...the poor sheep had the tip of his tail burned by the heat of the lightening striking the tree.
When Mr. Jenkins heard the commotion across the road, he tried and tried to get open his door, but he couldn't. He realized then that he had lost his key for the lock and now, he was trapped inside his house. He tried to see if the key was still in the lock on the other side of the door when he realized that his porch light was burned out. He headed for his storage closet when all of the lights went out. Luckily, he knew where his flashlight was, but what he didn't know was if the batteries were good. The moon was shining brightly through his windows and in the distance he heard an eerie sound. The call of the werewolf!
Feeling bad and sad that the werewolf was out in the bitter cold rain, Mr. Jenkins stumbled to the back door in the dark and opened it, (he didn't need a key for that door). He called to the werewolf in its own language, Vegetarian Werewolfarian, that he was welcome to come in and get warm and dry. So the werewolf came in and Mr. Jenkins explained that he needed to go to the basement storage room to get a light bulb to replace the burned out bulb on the front porch. Mr. Jenkins reached for his flashlight, which was on the counter near his book that he had to return to the library. As he picked up the flashlight, he knocked the book onto the floor. He heard the sound of a key clattering to the floor and he remembered that he had put his key on his book so he wouldn't forget to take it back to the library.
Just as he was getting to the stairs, all of the lights came back on. With everything that had just happened, he forgot why he was going down to the basement, so he turned to the werewolf and asked if he was interested in a quick dice game of Farkle. The two played until the storm passed and then the werewolf went home and Mr. Jenkins went to bed and the sheep across the road went back to the meadow.
The End.
By the way, our pictures were:
Andrew = lightening bolt
Thomas = light bulb
me = sheep
Andrew = tree
Thomas = lock
Me = flashlight
Andrew = moon
Thomas = sad
Me = dice
