Exciting times with the Magic Key
I never thought I’d become a blogger. Now I’m feeling really keen. These are exciting times.
My storytelling workshop in Croydon on Wednesday (with Classroom and Teaching Assistants) brought up the problem that people find it far easier to see themselves doing storytelling without the book with Early Years children and Infants. Junior-age children can seem so streetwise; it feels like they might be too mocking. Yet all my experience with the Junior age-group has given me an absolute confidence that they respond just as well or even MORE. Somehow we’ve got to get a culture of stories and storyworking into the top end of Primary schools. It’s the obvious way to feed children’s imaginations. It gets them listening, encourages them to speak and participate, develops their memory and improves their ability to share.
Which is exactly the feeling we can all get storytelling and storyworking.
Yesterday evening (Friday), I gave a talk on storyworking – again in Croydon. Guess what I called it? The Magic Key.
More soon.
Talk about exciting times. On Wednesday evening I was singing in Bryn Terfel’s Bad Boys concert at London’s Festival Hall. The London Welsh Chorale (where I’m an Alto) provided the chorus. Apart from singing Happy Birthday to Bryn in Welsh and a couple of pieces on our own, we did the choral parts for items including the wonderful Scarpia aria from Tosca and Stephen Sondheim’s Porgy and Bess. In the interval, Bryn brought the choir a birthday cake he’d been given with his photograph in icing, so we literally ate him up. He is truly a superstar with class, an internationally known singer with the common touch. A real people’s person, he made us all feel relaxed and confident.