What an adventure!

As we drove to the library today we played a little game in the car. Dragon Slayer started a story. "There once was a Princess named Goldilocks." Then Goldilocks added to it. "She lived in a treehouse." Then Monkey Boy. "And there was a Prince named Dragon Slayer." And I got to participate as well. "And Goldilocks was madly in love with the Prince."

As the story went on we found that the treehouse burned in a forest fire set by an evil dragon. The Prince, who was secretly in love with the Princess, was not free to express his feelings because of a feud between the two kingdoms but he was able to slay the evil dragon for what he had done. In the meantime the Princess had moved to the sea where she made friends with a seahorse. The Prince slowly got his family involved in charity work and then convinced them that the best charity of all would be to forgive the Princess' family and help him to find her and marry her. It took him four years but he finally found her living in a cave in a dune on the beach. By then she was so attached to the sea that she couldn't leave it so they built a castle made of pink ice next to the sea and planted a forest off the coast where they could rebuild her beloved treehouse.

Can you tell we are a family that loves fantasy stories? What I loved the most from this was that my youngest could participate. He followed the storyline well and added some of the greatest details. It was a fun exercise of the imagination and used problem solving skills as well. And when an idea was added that didn't initially make sense we just asked for elaboration and it was explained in more detail and added depth to the story. Perhaps tomorrow we can write it all down and each illustrate one or two pages.

Another fun variation on this game is to write down about 12 things(a red car, a field of butterflies, a worn old book) on separate pieces of paper. Fold the papers and put them in a bag. Start telling a story but every once in a while take out a paper and incorperate it into your story. To make it more of a learning experience make the elements different parts of speech. Think Mad Libs here. Let each child have a turn making up stories.