The Story Telling Game by iplay – review

If my husband has his favorite game of game night in Feed the Kitty!, I have mine in The Story Telling Game by iplay.  This is a game that I picked up at their annual toy sale which they have at their warehouse in NJ.  My five year old son chose it to play for this week’s game night.  It was such a hit that the boys (4 and 6 years old) wanted to play again the next night too.

Make up silly stories using picture cards and your imagination!

For a mother of two boys with distinct personalities this game works for us on two levels.  Our 6 year old enjoys competition and having a goal in a game.  The Story Telling Game accomplishes that by having a winner and the goal of getting rid of your cards while telling the story.  While my 4 year old is creative a big talker, so he loves the telling of the story.  From an educational point of view there are many things I love about The Story Telling Game.  Before we get into that though, let me give you a quick overview of how the game is played.  First, 5 cards are dealt to each player (there are 150 cards total) and the youngest player will start the story by laying down a card and using that card as the basis to the start of the story.  We start the sand timer at that point.  The next player must say the first part of the story while using the cards in their hand to add to the story.  This continues until the sand in the timer runs out.  If you are telling the story while the sand runs out you have to take all the cards in the story.  Also, if you cannot tell the story correctly when it is your turn you also have to take the cards.  Once the round is complete a new story is started until one player has used all of their cards.  We gave our boys a little leeway in the telling of the story, especially the 4 year old.  Surprisingly, he did much better at this game than we originally though and had a blast doing so.

Skills used and developed in this game include;  memorization, creative thinking, and expressive language.  Each card also has 3 languages on it (English Spanish, and French), so you can teach your child another language while playing.  The cards have a nice large picture of the item so that reading is not required to play for younger children.

The horse was eating an apple while the dog was barking in the background as we started the car to take the bird to the magic show where the magician was pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

That might be an example of a round in the game.  The only suggestion  I might make for some of the younger children is removing some of the cards that might create a scary story.  I know that our 4 year old did not like when the witch card was played.  It probably didn’t help that my husband used it in the following way

. . the scary witch snuck up from behind and . . .

iplay has a real hit on it’s hand in our household.  As both a mother of two and former teacher, I give The Story Telling Game two thumbs up!

Note:   We use the rules as a guideline for our family, we may change the game rules a bit to accommodate all family members, we will try to note this when possible.