Thursday, October 20, 2011

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.

5 comments:

  1. Hi Ronnie, thanks for hopping over...
    Love your little dolls!
    I made lots of those "Walldorf" kind of dolls when I was still working at school: we had a little table in our class room that changed with the season. (still have lots of them in a little chest of drawers ;-) ...)
    Well just try felting slippers: it is fun and not thát difficult when you have done some felting before (lucky you, winning the goodies from Fiona !!!)

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  2. Hi Els
    We too have a seasonal table and I am slowly building my collection of dolls and other goodies. I have done a bit of felting before but I am uncertain as to how the make the resist the right size for slippers.
    Thanks for commenting

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  3. Hi Ronnie, can't find an e-mail ...
    Can you send me one ?

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  4. Lovely story telling table, cheers Marie

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  5. hi can you share the story?
    rosamgonzaga@gmail.com

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