A long time ago when my daughter, now the mother of my grandchildren, was herself a little girl we started a circle story game that we played at home and especially on our road trips. The game went like this: one of us would make up and start a fiction/fantasy story about, well about anything the starter thought up [we took turns starting]. Then after a few sentences the next person would take up the story and add a few sentences from their imagination, then the 3rd person would add their bit and round and round it would go. Of course every time the story teller changed so would the story. Each different circle story game would evolve differently as they went around. It was great fun and sometimes the stories would go on for a long time, sometimes only a few circles, sometimes they'd continue as part of another story.
We started doing this when our daughter were maybe 4 so. Of course mom and i would keep the story interesting and at our daughter's level of understanding by molding it that way during our turns. Beside the fun we all had it was always very interesting to hear our little girl's changes to the evolving plots and characters both because they were so pure and because it taught both her mom and i so much about what was happening inside of her young mind and emotions. For instance, no matter how the story started she almost always slowly manipulated it during her turns to be about some form of family of creatures the mommy of whom had many happy healthy babies and lived happily everafter.
And now, nearly 35 years later, there she is, living her own self-directed life with her healthy, happy babies just like in her circle game stories. As our little girl grew older the stories we played with grew more complicated and eventually the game faded away, but i loved our circle story game and so did her mom. i'm sure we both wish those days had never ended, but that's a different story.
