Christine Cohen Park

PlayStories

Some years ago when I was regularly picking Jake up from his nursery school, then primary school, while his parents were at work, he and I spent the afternoons having fun in a way that was (I like to think) educational, and, most brilliant of all, cost nothing! And now when suddenly schools and nursery schools have shut down and children face all sorts of restrictions that may at times be challenging for everyone involved, we decided to put these PlayStories on my Blog so that any of you can access them and play these games. All of them involve having just two things – a lively imagination and a readiness to step into a story. Things that are natural to most children. Each story can be adapted to your child and your circumstances. Even if your children can’t go outside at present, hopefully following the adventures in these stories will open up a wider world of possibilities for a while.

I’m going to start with the way we started with the first PlayStory. The idea for how we would play these games together, as you will see, grew out of me one afternoon describing an incident that had happened to my mischievous dog Munro, and then Jake’s imagination taking off. As the weeks went by, we became increasingly ambitious at what we could come up with. I would start the story and then Jake would take it in his own direction and  – being almost as mischievous as Munro – making it as difficult as he could for his Grandma. Luckily she had some tricks of her own up her sleeve!