The perfect thing about storytelling with story dice is there is never a wrong way to tell your story; children and adults can share the storytelling and take the story in any direction.

And here you can download five dice templates to colour in, stick together and use for endless storytelling!

Try rolling all the dice at once and telling a story based on the 5 pictures you can see or roll them one at a time and take turns to add a sentence to the story - you can keep rolling the dice as many times as you choose!

If your child is particularly interested in some of the pictures, let them pick which ones they want to include in the story; the more comfortable they feel, the more likely they are to get involved.  Explore all the pictures first - it's tricky to make up a story if you don't know what the objects are!

Hearing stories and having conversations focused on pictures helps children learn more words and understand how to use them.  It also helps them better understand how language works - which in turn, helps support their developing reading skills.  The more words a child knows and can use correctly, the easier they will find it to understand what they are reading.

Story dice can take away the pressure children sometimes feel when they are reading aloud and can give them the confidence to tell a story to an audience.  And while the dice are great fun, you could quite easily adapt the game to play without them - simply pick 5 things and turn them into a story!

Make storytelling a regular family activity; the more children have fun with stories, the more likely they are to want to be involved with books and reading.

Download the dice here