Story Stones: Sparking Literacy Through Play

In this short and inspiring episode of Let’s Talk Teacher to Teacher, Dr. Gina Pepin introduces Story Stones — a playful, hands-on tool that makes storytelling and literacy come alive. Discover what story stones are, how to make them (without fuss or expensive supplies), and creative ways to use them for building language, narrative skills, and even social-emotional connections in your classroom.

From circle-time adventures to writer’s workshop prompts, Dr. Pepin shares practical strategies you can try right away — plus a “Try It Tomorrow” tip that will have your students’ imaginations soaring with just five simple stones.

Whether you’re teaching early literacy, looking for fresh storytelling ideas, or simply want to add more joy to your lessons, this episode will give you a pocket-sized strategy with a big impact.

Tune in, and start sparking stories — one stone at a time.

Check out more at www.ginapepin.com

Transcript

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Welcome back to Let's Talk Teacher to Teacher, the show where we share practical, powerful, and playful ways to build joyful learning in the classroom. I'm your host, Dr. Gina Pepin, and today we're talking about one of my absolute favorite literacy tools, StoryStones. It's a hands-on, low prep, big impact way to spark storytelling and language development in any age classroom. So what are StoryStones? StoryStones are just what they sound like. They're small stones or pebbles painted or decorated with little pictures, symbols, or even words. Each stone represents a character or a setting, an object, or it could even represent an event. When our children pull a stone from the pile, they use it as a prompt to tell part of a story. It's open-ended, it's tactile, and it builds oral language, sequencing, creativity, and narrative structure in such a natural way. and playful way. So making story stones is super easy. It's a breeze. There are three easy methods. First one is you can paint them by hand. Let students decorate their own. You can have simple images like a sun, a dinosaur, cupcake, or a castle. Of course, all these things can go a long way. You can use stickers or you can mod podge plus, you know, mod podging printed images right onto the rocks. You can do it by keeping a theme so try stones story stones for fairy tales or for emotions seasonal vocabulary sight words or even at the secondary level I share in a lot of my presentations that you could use them as a to an accompany a novel that you're working on with your class a pro tip could be even that you seal them with clear nail polish or of course mod podge so that they'll last a whole lot longer the There are a lot of ways to use story stones in the classroom. The possibilities are absolutely endless. Try some of these. For circle time stories, this is where each student pulls a stone out of a little tiny bag. You can get those little cinch sacks from like Oriental Trading where they're colorful like canvas bags that they pull with like a drawstring. They're a little bit smaller where you can fit maybe 10 stones. For those circle time stories, each student pulls a stone and adds a line to like a collaborative of class story, this ongoing story building prompt. You can also use it in writer's workshop as prompts. Use them to spark journal entries or short stories as they pull a stone from the bag. You can use them for retelling familiar tales. So you give students story stones for the three little pigs and you let them actually act it out. Or you have them put them into sequence, specific sequential orders so that students can help remember and work on retelling and comprehension you can also use story stones in the classrooms as a feelings check-in so you have emotion stones they help let kids share how they're feeling at that moment most importantly this isn't just a literacy tool it's a social emotional tool and it's a connection builder so here's your try it tomorrow tip put just five story stones in a basket or a little drawstring bag Maybe like a cat, a house, star, tree, and a pizza. Tell your students, let's make a story using these five stones and then let their imagination take off. You'll be amazed by what they create and how many literacy skills they're using all at once. That's it for today's episode on Storystones. It's a simple, sensory-rich tool that invites creativity and builds storytelling skills one stone at a time. Thanks for listening to Let's Talk Teacher to Teacher. If you loved today's tip, leave a review, share the episode with a teaching friend, and remember, great stories start with small stones. Until next time, keep the joy and keep the story and keep teaching from the heart. Check out the free story stones, images, and PDFs on my website at www.ginapeppin.com

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