STORYTELLING...



We all tell stories, some of us even make a living out of it. At the moment I've been doing a few extra Storytimes and we are now endeavouring to not only make them fun, interesting and educational (who knew 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, once I caught a fish alive was about counting?) but dynamic and interactive as well.

This often means bringing in puppets, props or toys and using these to help tell a story.

A few weeks ago I told the story of The Three Little Pigs. I used some puppets and a white board. For each pig we drew their house. First a straw house, then the log house, then the brick house. The children had to help the Big Bad Wolf huff and puff the houses down.

The kids loved it. When it was time for the brick house there was so much huffing and puffing that I hate to think how much spittle I was covered in.

Stories, of course, are everywhere and we hear them everyday. It doesn't take much to make them come more alive for children.


Little Miss and I made a unicorn sock puppet over the weekend. It turned out quite
bizarre interesting cute. Then of course we had to have a puppet show. When I say we, I mean that she had to have a puppet show to an audience of one, me.

She had a ball telling her story, although the storyline was quite sad.

Unicorn's boyfriend had just broken up with her and she was heart broken. A snail going by wouldn't stop and help her...so she cried until she met, I think it was a snow leopard, who said she too had just broken up with her boyfriend. The ending was a scream of 'let's be best friends forever then'...and they lived happily ever after.

On the weekend there was also a touch of face painting.

This is a cat...

looking suitably impressed over the weekend.

This is an interpretation of a Fairy Princess Cat (don't ask me, I just painted what I was asked to).


Little Miss changed outfits to become more in character and even added the cat ears.


Time for another show. This time I watched her tell the story of a cat. There was a lot of playing with things, chewing on them, then sleeping curled up on the rug. (This was my time to do the sound effects, seems I do a very good purring sleeping cat)

It doesn't take much to take a story from bland to exciting. Just about anything can be read out loud, made interactive or at least when read, read with different voices. The most important part is taking the time to give it punch, add that pizzazz...and of course have fun.



I know I do.

Vicki 

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