Storytime - take a new path off a familiar trail
Today was my drop-in improv story group at Habitot (habitot.org)....This has been my first month and it is a great lab for ideas and learning experience for me.
The age range of the kids in the drop-in group as been a few months old to around 4 years old...my practice lab at home with LP is exclusive to her specific 2 year old development so I have to bring a focused improv mindset to work with the range of abilities and interests int he room.
Today I experimented with using a mix of the familiar to get started and then following/creating a new story based on the participation.
I prepared for my internally titled "Chicken Story Day!" by reviewing the stories of Chicken Little and the Little Red Hen and remembering to bring my props (a stash of homemade seed "pods" I've been making - all stuffed with green fabric to pull out to make plants grow and lovely generic blue, green and yellow large pieces of fabric to serve as whatever was needed).
I also used familiar songs and let them get a "twist"...starting with "Hello, everybody, it's so nice to see you.." which the kids know from a bazillion storytimes, music groups, etc and using that song to "wake up" the different animals on the farm.
The Chicken Little story had a chicken puppet using one of the seedpods so then I passed them out to all the people - big & little- to work together in planting a full crop that we planted, watered, helped grow, harvested and finally feasted on.
Although neither story wandered too far off the familiar path, I think this has a lot of potential as a "story prompt" when my making it up well is dry. The LPs of the world can always help trigger our imaginations to tell the story of the three golf carts when we were headed off to tell the Three Little Pigs again.
On a funny note, LP spent most of the session amusing herself with different puppets and other farm props in the area except for coming up to me on a fairly regular basis to say "sing a song." So then...there were songs (one improvised from scratch, one take-off on a known song and one version of "Twinkle Twinkle" as sung by ducks).
The age range of the kids in the drop-in group as been a few months old to around 4 years old...my practice lab at home with LP is exclusive to her specific 2 year old development so I have to bring a focused improv mindset to work with the range of abilities and interests int he room.
Today I experimented with using a mix of the familiar to get started and then following/creating a new story based on the participation.
I prepared for my internally titled "Chicken Story Day!" by reviewing the stories of Chicken Little and the Little Red Hen and remembering to bring my props (a stash of homemade seed "pods" I've been making - all stuffed with green fabric to pull out to make plants grow and lovely generic blue, green and yellow large pieces of fabric to serve as whatever was needed).
I also used familiar songs and let them get a "twist"...starting with "Hello, everybody, it's so nice to see you.." which the kids know from a bazillion storytimes, music groups, etc and using that song to "wake up" the different animals on the farm.
The Chicken Little story had a chicken puppet using one of the seedpods so then I passed them out to all the people - big & little- to work together in planting a full crop that we planted, watered, helped grow, harvested and finally feasted on.
Although neither story wandered too far off the familiar path, I think this has a lot of potential as a "story prompt" when my making it up well is dry. The LPs of the world can always help trigger our imaginations to tell the story of the three golf carts when we were headed off to tell the Three Little Pigs again.
On a funny note, LP spent most of the session amusing herself with different puppets and other farm props in the area except for coming up to me on a fairly regular basis to say "sing a song." So then...there were songs (one improvised from scratch, one take-off on a known song and one version of "Twinkle Twinkle" as sung by ducks).
posted by Susan at
8:30 PM
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