Spreading the word
It’s not necessarily easy to tell stories to the Under-Fives. Some people find it a nightmare, others find it very hard work to keep the children interested. I sympathise! It’s not necessarily something that comes naturally, especially if you didn’t get told stories as a child and you haven’t got any role-models. Far too few opportunities exist for adults to discover the tricks of the trade with the Early Years age-group. Yet courses and workshops can be so productive. Apart from anything else, they open up a great opportunity to share rhymes and chants and stories that work (see below for some examples I collected from a great group of people in Cardiff on Saturday.) How about this one? You can invent your own actions:
‘I’m a little snowman, short and fat.
Here’s my scarf and here’s my hat.
When the sun comes out, I melt away.
When it’s cold, I’m here to stay.’
Or how about this one? You can repeat with different colours.
‘Baa baa pink sheep
Have you any jelly?
No sir, no sir
It’s all in my belly.’
Sharing experiences, rhymes and stories makes storytelling workshops good fun. Whether at Warwick University, in Barnet or in Cardiff, everyone recently has agreed that storytelling without the book is different. It’s direct, relaxing and creative. It’s not that you’d ever completely abandon using books with the children. But it does represent another extremely powerful string to your bow. And, believe me, it works. Please write in and say if it works for you.
March 8th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
I love your rhymes- thanks for sharing them!
I just did a 45 minute session with ages 4-5s- my first ever! I used a mixture of ‘told’ stories and books. It was fantastic and their favourite book and great finisher was “The aliens are coming” by colin mcnaughton. They loved joining in with the chant ‘the aliens are coming’ getting louder and louder as the alens got closer.