Friday, May 19, 2006

My Story Island Home

I've had a wonderful week of telling stories to young children this week. I love seeing the way children respond to stories. At one kindergarten, I had spent about 10 minutes telling a story with full on sound effects and action and kids joining in and laughing and coming up with suggestions and, at the end, a young girl right down the front put her hand up and said, "Could you tell that story again please?" Isn't that perfect.

Today there was a moment that made all of the driving worth it. A young boy had to be helped to walk into the room by the Director because of a physical disability that required him to wear some supportive legware. She also helped him sit up and helped him dance in the 'Old Man and the Drum' story. He was having a great time and at the end of the show all of the kids came over to shake my hand. He did as well and said, "That was a great story about the sheep."

It was the version of 'Baa, Baa, Black Sheep' that I have been improvising and polishing over the last month or so. He said, "I'm going to tell it to my Dad." I thought 'Yes!' this is what this storytelling business is about.

It made the drive back to Brisbane along the freeway worthwhile.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, sounds like heaps of fun.

Austories said...

Hi June,

Yes mostly it is a heap of fun. The other day a young boy asked for 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' so off we went singing the nursery ryhme and improvising a story about grandpa getting it wrong and then telling his grandaughter about finding a diamond while he was being rescued from a mine. Mine rescues are pretty topical at the moment with the resue of the Tasmanian miners so much in the news.

Regards
Daryll

Anonymous said...

The imrprovisation sounds very interesting.

It seems improvisation is something just so essential to working with kids not to mention being a parent.