Tell me a story

I love books - I think that I always have. I love reading to my children. As an early childhood teacher I had a pretty impressive book collection and that was before my own children came along!!
My weak point however has always been oral storytelling. I am not really a natural but I wish I was. Last year when we attended a Steiner playgroup A loved the weekly story and so did I.
So I have decided that it is an area that I am going to work on . I was recently inspired by this post and two weeks ago I gave it a go.

I chose to tell a story called "Brown Caterpillar" that I found in the book 'Very short stories for 3-4 year olds' compiled by Kim Preston and distributed by the Melbourne Rudolf Sreiner School. It is seasonally appropriate and I have heard it told so it was not to hard to memorise. All the props we already had - it was very simple - a few silks, river stones, pinecones, a brance, blooms from our front yard and a felt caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly.

Well both children LOVED it. They sat so still, taking it all in and then wanted to tell their own stories. A went first and his story was similar to the original but there were some points of difference. It was very sweet.

Then it was H's turn. She did a fantastic job of retelling the story for a 2 1/2 year old.

In fact we each had to have two turns and a story that I thought would take 5 - 10 minutes ended up taking at least 30 minutes - perfect entertainment on a rainy spring day.
My confidence has been given a real boost and I am planning on making story telling part of our regular rhythm.