Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly framed as a collaborative partner in creative activities, yet children's interactions with AI have largely been studied in AI-led instructional settings rather than co-creative collaboration. This leaves open questions about how children can meaningfully engage with AI through iterative co-creation. We present Tinker Tales, a tangible storytelling system designed with narrative and social-emotional scaffolding to support child-AI collaboration. The system combines a physical storytelling board, NFC-embedded toys representing story elements (e.g., characters, places, items, and emotions), and a mobile app that mediates child-AI interaction. Children shape and refine stories by placing and moving story elements and interacting with the AI through tangible and voice-based interaction. We conducted an exploratory user study with 10 children to examine how they interacted with Tinker Tales. Our findings show that children treated the AI as an attentive, responsive collaborator, while scaffolding supported coherent narrative refinement without diminishing children's agency.

翻译：人工智能（AI）日益被视为创意活动中的协作伙伴，然而目前对儿童与AI互动的研究主要集中在AI主导的教学场景，而非协同创意协作。这引发了关于儿童如何通过迭代式协同创作与AI进行有意义互动的开放性问题。我们提出了Tinker Tales——一个融合叙事与社会情感支架的实体化叙事系统，旨在支持儿童与AI的协作。该系统整合了实体故事板、嵌入NFC芯片的代表故事元素（如角色、地点、物品和情感）的玩具，以及协调儿童与AI交互的移动应用程序。儿童通过放置和移动故事元素，并结合实体与语音交互方式与AI互动，从而塑造和完善故事。我们开展了包含10名儿童的探索性用户研究，以观察他们与Tinker Tales的互动模式。研究发现，儿童将AI视为专注且响应迅速的协作伙伴，同时系统支架在保持儿童自主性的前提下，有效支持了连贯的叙事优化。