‘Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination...’ I do hope that you are all as well as can be expected at the moment. I don’t know about you but I’ve been wanting to retreat into a make believe world more & more lately, and I can’t help but think that’s no bad thing. Tapping into our imaginative skills could not be more needed right now (& I’m not just talking about our little people!). These story tokens are the perfect thing for this, created to spark ideas & prompt play they’re a gorgeous gift to give to your children. Encased in a beautifully designed tin, each set contains 16 solid maple wood engraved tokens - we have 4 themes, adventures, fairytale, ocean & the circus.
What I love most about them is how wonderfully open ended they are, you can literally use them in any way your child chooses! They are fantastic for rainy days, bedtimes & long car journeys. The tin is small & compact, so can be slipped into hand bags & rucksacks so that you’ve always got a little activity for whenever you need one. Because they’re so tactile, my children love running them through their fingers and then picking out the tokens they want to use to help guide the next adventure, story time or whatever kind of activity they crave at the time.
They might be needing some quiet one to one time and so want to curl up & use the tokens for some self initiated story time. For this, you could take it in turns to pick a token from the tin & use it to invent a part of the story. You could also do this with bigger groups & place all the tokens face down in the middle, with each player picking a token in turn.
A great way to use them would be as prompts for some imaginative play like we did here! We picked the circus theme and there was no end of ideas for fun games! First we attempted a bit of juggling, and some strong man style challenges using toys and balloons! Then we went onto making tickets for a show - a classic family favourite I think! Popcorn to sell to the audience, singing, strange talents and many a bedraggled toy display as various circus animals!
The ocean set created a story about a beautiful merman called Thomas who apparently was the speediest merman in the sea, this then sparked drawings, role play & many conversations about the realities of our oceans. It was fantastic that it all came so organically from a few ideas gleaned from the tokens,
We naturally kept coming back to stories and so it was so nice dipping into old favourites & getting out particular characters to play with, this little Jeremy Fisher is one of my old toys and it was so nice getting him in on the action too! They’re also a fab way to get siblings of all different ages playing together as children can direct the story in any way they choose.
Imagination is the only limit – you can make your own games, treasure hunts, or story trails, the possibilities are endless!
So where will the tokens take your little ones? My youngest is very attached to the fairytale set and I have to say it’s been a winner at bedtimes all this week - lets hope all the magic spells keep her in her own bed tonight!
