What is roll-a-story?
Roll-a-story involves making up a story together and using a dice to decide what happens in the story.
Why are roll-a-story activities good for kids?
Roll-a-story activities are great for helping kids:
- build language, communication and thinking skills
- develop numeracy skills like counting, probability and chance
- learn to focus
- work on their ability to cooperate and take turns
- make friends.
What you need for a roll-a-story activity
All you need for a roll-a-story activity is:
- 2 or more people
- a number dice or playing cards.
How to do a roll-a-story activity
Getting started
- Choose someone to start the story. When your child is learning how to do roll-a-story, it helps if you or another adult starts.
- Start with a simple sentence like ‘Once there was a …’ and ask your child to choose the character – for example, a grandmother, a monkey or a moose.
- Include an event that requires your child to choose a number. For example, ‘The monkey loved to eat bananas. How many bananas did the monkey eat today?’
- Ask your child to roll the dice or pick a playing card to find the answer.
- Take turns to add to the story.
Ideas and options
- Keep the story short and simple or make it more complex, depending on your child’s abilities and attention.
- Try adding a finishing sentence at the end – for example, ‘And that was the end of that!’
How to adapt roll-a-story to suit children with diverse abilities
For children who have difficulty with fine motor skills, you could use a large foam dice or oversized playing cards.
Children who have difficulty with communication might find it easier to point or gesture at number or picture cards.
For children with a lot of energy, encourage them to act out the story as you make it up together. For example, your child could pretend to be the monkey, jumping around and eating 10 bananas.
For children with low vision or blindness, you could use a large dice or a braille or tactile dice. Or your child could dip their hand into a container of counters to pull out an amount you count together. You could also try a talking dice or dice-rolling apps on your phone or device.
You can get more ideas for adapting this activity from our articles on play and autistic children and play and children with disability. You might also like to explore our other activity guides. They can all be adapted to suit children with diverse strengths and abilities.