Ever since Big Boy started nursery over 3 years ago, we have been a big family of tale-tellers. The only thing I ever heard from his year of nursery, where he did ‘nothing’ every day, was who did what bad thing to who.
Fast-forward 3 years, and now with two infants at school, the situation remains the same. Or twice as bad.
It has to be said that my two children must surely be perfect, like Horrid Henry’s brother, Perfect Peter, as they are never featured in the tale. They have never done any wrong. Never. At all. Odd, eh?
But they are both super-keen and eager to tell me which child ended up on the Rain Cloud for bad behaviour (for heinous crimes such as calling out when on the carpet), who pushed who, who was sent to the Headmistress….
At this point, I feel I should say that I discourage all this tale-telling, but that in itself would be a great big tale. After a whole long school day by myself, there’s nothing I love more than to hear Big Boy and Little Angel tell me eagerly who did what. Truly, it’s the highlight of my day.
But this week, I’m going to try to move them onto a different kind of Tale Telling as it is National Storytelling Week.
National Storytelling Week, which I admit to having only discovered this morning, has been around for 24 years and celebrates the tradition of oral storytelling. It seems that libraries and schools up and down the country are putting on special events to encourage children and adults to spend time telling tales. It sounds really like my kind of thing, so I don’t know how I never noticed it before!
So, this week, every day after school, we are going to sit down and take it in turns to tell stories to each other. And I have a little trick up my sleeve to help us unleash our creative genius! We’re going to use a box of Rory’s Story Cubes to ‘let (y)our imagination roll wild!’.
Ingredients:
1 box of Rory’s Story Cubes
1 comfy rug
1 comfy cushion per child
A large dose of natural wit
A pinch of over-enthusiasm
A light dusting of artistic licence
Method:
Put all 9 cubes in your hand and give them a good shake.
Tip out onto the rug.
Using the 9 images, concoct a tale for the delight and pleasure of the others.
….Let the magic of Storytelling begin!
Coming Soon: Storytelling Week Tales from The Empty Nest: Tale 1! Stay tuned!
And, if you need some help to get started with oral storytelling, you’ll find some really useful advice here.