Storymatic Kids

• 360 cards = gazillions of fun card combinations to prompt stories, characters, scenes, situations, and plots. 
• Family-friendly content means children, tweens, teens, parents, and grandparents can play at the same time. 
• Wild cards encourage you to tell stories in different ways and from different points of view.
• Make your own cards and mix ‘em into the deck! There are 20 blank cards waiting for your imagination.
• Accessible: Cards are thick with rounded edges– easy for small hands to hold. The language is approachable for early and experienced readers alike.
• Includes a booklet with lots of prompts, suggestions, and activities to help kids of all ages bring more stories into the world.
• Easy, fun creative tool for writers of all ages, for story time, classes, and homeschool– as well as an easy, fun storytelling game for family game night, improv, and travel.
• Parents, teachers, and therapists: Storymatic Kids can help with public speaking, listening skills, sequential thinking, as well as fostering imagination and empathy.
• Performers: Storymatic Kids is a great tool for improvising scenes, developing characters, and exploring backstory.
• Made in USA and ships from beautiful Vermont.

Ages 5 and up, up, up. If you’re looking for something that starts at around age 13, check out The Storymatic Classic.

Marlow and her father Ryan writing and drawing together.

The basics of Storymatic Kids are super easy.

Draw two gold cards and combine what they say to get a main character. Say you draw “pirate” and “person who must take care of an egg”; your character is a pirate who needs to take care of an egg.

Next, draw one or two blue cards and let the situations, objects, places, and complications lead you into a story. You can be as silly or serious as you want. Maybe you draw "lost”... well, there’s a story in those cards! Is the pirate lost? Did the pirate lose the egg? What kind of egg is it anyway? Why does the pirate need to take care of it? What’s the pirate’s name? Tell your story however you want. Write it, draw it, act it, sing it!

The instruction booklet that comes with each Storymatic Kids has lots of prompts, suggestions, but feel free to come up with your own ways to play!

For a good discussion about the booklet, skip down to the video from home-school mom ToriAnn Perkey. She has a nice How To that starts at 1:00, and she talks about the booklet at 2:45. 

In another handy How To video, Advanced Academics Teacher Specialists Lawrence Paul and Stacey Morrissey show Storymatic Kids to Dr. Terry Alban, the superintendent of Maryland's Frederick County Public Schools. The How To part of their conversation starts 45 seconds into the video.

One of the nice things about Storymatic Kids is that you can use it however you want, and you can make up your own ways to play. Here are a few examples of ways people have made Storymatic Kids their own. 

Molly's Way– Molly is a writer, teacher, and the founder of the youth theater group Brave New Shakespeare. When Molly is directing a play, she likes to scatter cards on the floor and have her young actors sort through them to find descriptions that fit with the characters they're playing.

Elevate Improv's Way– Elevate is a children's improv program that uses the art of improv to foster a judgement-free environment that promotes creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration. They play Yes, And with Storymatic Kids. In Yes, And, each new part of a story begins with, "Yes, and..."

Christine's Way– Christine is an ESL Teacher who uses Storymatic Kids in her classes with pre-teens and teens because the language is accessible, the cards are bright, and the font is clean and crisp. 

Cian's Way– When schools first started to switch to learning from home during the pandemic, 10-year-old Cian wanted to make some new friends by telling stories online. He made this video (with only a little bit of help from his mom) so he could "reach out to other kids while home from school & away from friends."