Literacy Spot #36: Story Cards

ByChristie Burnett

Early literacy learning

Story cards are a fun and easy way to get young children talking, conversing and making stories, and they can be easily adapted to the interests of an individual child or group of children 🙂

While you can source commercial sets of cards (like these Wiggles cards I posted about last year), it is easy to improvise or make your own. Creating your own set of cards also means that they can be personalised for your child which is even more likely to get them communicating!

Five ideas for sourcing and making your own story cards…

  • The cards shown above are simply free community postcards which I have collected over the years. I have a whole box full and I go through them periodically and pull out a collection of images representing people, animals, places and actions to use for storytelling.
  • Choose interesting images from magazines and paste onto squares of cardboard (laminating optional).
  • Search the internet for images related to your child’s current area of interest, print them out and paste onto squares of cardboard.
  • Hit the op shop/thrift shop for pre-loved picture books (kids non-fiction are great for this) and give them a second lease on life by cutting out a selection of interesting images. Paste onto squares of cardboard.
  • Print out photos of your own family and friends, places you like to visit and objects of interest and make a very unique and personalised set of story cards for your family.

For ideas on how to use your story cards with young children, check out my recent guest post over at Li’l Magoolie. The story stone play ideas shared work just as well for story cards 🙂

And for more information about the importance of storytelling for young children, check out my article ‘Once Upon a Time’ in issue 1 of Play Grow Learn.

What is Childhood 101′s Literacy Spot? It is a weekly reminder of the importance of young children learning playfully as each week I share one idea for playing around with literacy, taken from my many years working as an early childhood teacher. Visit the previous Literacy Spot posts for more fun ideas for playing with literacy.

Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.

14 Comments

  1. We love story cards! We have a princess fairytale set from eBoo. I would love to get more sets and I like your idea of making our own, too.

    They have been so much fun for the whole family!

  2. Mama Booth says:

    I found several sets of “writing prompt” cards at our local dollar store. Dollar Tree is the one I went to. I use them for conversation starters with our preschool age children. The sets I bought were: presidents, weather, people around the world and inventions.

  3. I’ve used similar prompts in my classrooms in the past but I’m thinking that I might make a special set for my soon to be 4yo niece for her birthday from photos we’ve taken together.

    It’s great to have a combo of images of people, places, things and times of the day.
    You can then give the story teller a choice of using just one card to prompt their tale or a combo or ‘who’ ‘where’ ‘what’ and when’.

    Thanks for the great post, I’m off to scan and laminate some photos!
    xx Felicity

    1. What a special Aunt you are, I am sure that your niece will love her very own set of story cards 🙂

  4. Being cheeky here, with a little bit of self promo 😉 These are mainly for older kids (7-12yo), but my 5yo and his best mate really enjoyed playing them recently. A little adult guidance and encouragement to help draw their stories out doesn’t go astray with the little ones. Leaf Kid Stuff Story Starters http://leafjournals.com/topic/products/kid-stuff-theme . Happy to send you a pack for review, Christie!

      1. 😀

  5. What a wonderful post. Even though my daughter is ten, story telling is a big part of our lives. We made some story dice which she still loves playing with now. There are three dice and on each face is a picture. We take in turns to roll the dice and make a sentence of a story based on the picture on the dice – it’s a lot of fun!

  7. I love this idea. I’m thinking of photos I’ve taken (or could take) as well as looking for postcards and old books. Thanks for giving my brain a jumpstart today.

  8. I love storycards, we often cut up leaflets from our favourite places and characters from catalogues etc. to make our own. I’m inspired to make some more this week, thanks for the tips.

  9. Really great idea! My daughter has a story card game that she just loves!

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