So the Princess Got Kicked out of Machine School

Bess loves playing games in the car - but they can get a little tedious for Mom and Dad. There are only so many knock-knock jokes that don't make any sense (Knock Knock! Who's There? Elephant! Elephant Who? Elephant horse! HAHAHAHAHAHA!) that one can take, and though she enjoys playing I Spy, it doesn't really lend itself to highway driving. By the time she's done describing what she sees - I spy with my little eye something that is YELLOW - we're already half a mile past the object.

So we came up with a new game to play that is actually fun for grownups and preschooler alike. Really, it's not that new - I've read about it other places though I can't remember where, but it's new to us. One person starts a story by saying one sentence, and then the other person gives the next sentence, and you take turns adding on until someone ends the story. I'm really enjoying this activity with Bess, because it is interesting to see how she tries to manipulate the stories so that they go the way she wants instead of going with the flow that I try to establish.

For example, yesterday she started a story with "Once upon a time there was a princess" (of course). So I continued, "The princess really liked to fix machines that were broken." But that was definitely not the direction Bess had in mind, so she continued, "But the princess didn't know how to fix machines." So, "The princess decided to go to school to learn how to fix things." Bess: "But she threw something at the teacher and got kicked out of that school and wasn't allowed to come back, so she never learned how to fix machines." Eventually, the princess turned into a mermaid or something - that's the way the stories often end, with someone swimming off into the sea to live happily ever after, the end.