Brainstorming: children's stories

Sunk Costs - should be easy. Someone does something reasonable, then the situation changes, but the person refuses to change their path, explicitly speaking about the sunk costs. Because it's a bedtime story, the stupidity of the person could be astronomical. For example: there way a boy who wanted to ski in the winter, so he saved money and bought skis... but at the time the snow melted and the winter was over. But the boy insisted on his emotional and financial investment, so he kept wearing the skis during the whole year. Insert various unrealistic situations, resulting problems, and lost opportunities. The other kids were swimming in the lake, this one kid tried, but... wearing the skis... he almost drowned, and after he was saved he just kept sitting at the beach, envying the other kids. But he still refused to take the skis off, explaining how long he worked to get them.

Wondering which side is true instead of arguing for a side - make it so that no side is completely true; each of them is right about some aspect, but wrong about other. Two teams of children saw a mysterious animal; one team reported it as a pink elephant, other team as a brown bear; the Curious Kid refused to take sides and investigated, and it was actually a brown elephant.

I would say something absurd and when my son said I was wrong I would ask him for evidence (me: there is an invisible dinosaur in the room, son: it would crash through the floor, me: some dinosaurs are small.)

Mast tying: Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel, the "cookies" story. After eating too many cookies, Frog and Toad make them less and less accessible. Bonus because Frog and Toad are just generally awesome.

Not stories but...

Fermi estimates can be fun for kids (How many gumballs in this gumball machine is a classic) though for a three year old, it may be too advanced. How many action figures fit in this glass?

Three year olds can play "Guess the animal" which is 20 questions with some leeway on the yes/no part ("is it bigger or smaller than horse" is always our first question). Ingrain some binary search algorithms!

You seem to have the goal of exposing your child to ideas. Will you be expecting these ideas to take root? Your child might not get it, and your child might get it but not care as you do. If either of these outcomes happens, do not be discouraged. Memories that you spent time together matter most.

I encourage you to read Piaget theories of childhood development. Two sentences for you to consider: "At about two to four years of age, children cannot yet manipulate and transform information in a logical way. However, they now can think in images and symbols."

When pressed for this I tend to take a particular story, and try to strip it down into it's abstract form - something like - protagonist and companion undergo journey, face 3 opposing characters, arrive at destination and have life lessons confirmed. Then redecorate it with different particulars from other stories - switch males for females, dinosaurs for insects etc. Often this process stimulates my own creativity and i end up with something fairly new, but it guarantees an acceptable bedtime story. Know your audience though. A three year old child mainly wants amusing images. Mild scatology tends to go down a treat as well.

At this point, it might be more beneficial to teach values than anything abstract. For example, a lot of people here are crippled by akrasia. You could hedge against that by telling your kid stories where hard work pays off. That might make teaching other things later a lot easier. Too many stories have a protagonist who did nothing to become awesome.

I wrote some posts about this topic:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ihs/bed_time_stories_with_clear_concepts/

http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/iha/raising_numerate_children/

ADDED; You might also look at http://lesswrong.com/user/Gunnar_Zarncke/ for more rational parenting resources.

A fun project! And one I'm trying to do for my kids.

One thing that worries me a little about trying to tell parables about these sorts of concepts is that, outside mathematical formalism, most real-world examples are not clear cut. Most fallacies, for instance, have versions that are useful real-world heuristics. Take post hoc ergo propter hoc. It is indeed strictly a fallacy to deduce that and event was caused by the event that immediately preceded it. But "What did you do differently just before it broke?" can be a really useful diagnostic question. And most of the time when you're a small kid, an adult pulling an appeal to authority on you really does know better than you do.

I'd worry less about trying to introduce abstract concepts to small kids and do more modelling/engaging/reinforcing of general curiosity, questioning, reasoning, and trying to figure things out for yourself. If they get that, they'll be able to pick up the abstract concepts for themselves, whether you are an effective teacher of them or not.

Kids seem remarkably immune - or even resistant - to adopting explicit 'morals' from stories (I know I was, and my own kids seem similar). But they do soak up general approaches and underlying values.

The best moments are when the kids ask about something. But for me it's often a fine balance between giving them the immediate answer (satisfying their curiosity and rewarding asking), and using it as an opportunity to build their ability to work things out for themselves.

http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Rescue-Kris-Langman-ebook/dp/B001QTXLQ4

It has a sequel.

You might find this useful -- may help with improvisations :-)