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.
Sounds like something I occasionally do, or try to do (mostly because my kid asks for stories with dinosaurs); do you have a handy list of abstract stripped-down stories by any chance ? (or do you use an existing one like the Seven Basic Plots?) Do you have a usable list of life lessons?
(I'm slowly collecting and organizing material like this, it's something I find pretty interesting, not only for telling stories to my kid ...)
So I have a three-year old kid, and will usually read or tell him a bedtime story.
That is a nice opportunity to introduce new concepts, but my capacity for improvisation is limited, especially towards the end of the day. So I'm asking the good people on LessWrong for ideas. How would you wrap various lesswrongish ideas in a short story a little kid would pay attention to?
I'm mostly interested in the aspects of "practical rationality" that aren't going to be taught at school or in children's books or children's TV shows - so things like Sunk Costs, taking the outside view, wondering which side is true instead of arguing for a side, etc.
Pointers to outside sources of such stories are welcome too!
Edit: actually, if you want to share ideas of games or activities of the same kind, go ahead! :)