Story Sack Corner

One of the most desirable outcomes of using a story sack for me is to promote children learning their own storytelling skills. A story sack provides many ways of supporting this, and I will write about these in another post.

A great prop that you can use to boost confidence in some children when telling their stories is a storytelling stick. This is a lovely idea to provide something for a less confident child to use when learning and practicing their storytelling skills.

There is a great little guide to making storytelling sticks at ‘Call of story‘.

Perhaps you could make one for each of your story sacks or include in this as an activity sheet in each of them.

Have fun!

If you are interested in using a story sack then you are interested in storytelling. A story sack should support the telling of a story, not be the focus in itself. I found an excellent academic video that talks about the structure of stories, storytelling as a way of organizing information, conveying emotions, and building community.

Professor Brian Sturm from the University of North Carolina presents a model of storytelling as altered state of consciousness (the story trance) and tells three stories to illustrate the theoretical model: Truth and Story; What happens when you really listen; and The stone cutter.

Make a cup of tea and enjoy …

A story sack can be used to support storytelling and after watching the video you may like to consider how you can use your sacks to build a story trance.

Story box project

Storyboxproject.com is currently seeking Story Ambassadors for the next global launch beginning in June of the Story Box.

If you would like to have a traveling box of stories delivered to you fill out the form at www.storyboxproject.com.

Each Story Ambassador will arrange story events to celebrate the stories in the StoryBox and events to place stories in the StoryBox.

Over 40 StoryBoxes will be launched from The Ohio State University and are waiting for you to receive them. Sign up to receive a StoryBox now. There is no charge to receive it just you pay to ‘pass it forward.’

You can also send stories to travel as well.

“Together we make a difference with story.”

If anyone has run a similar scheme using story sacks we would love to hear from you. 

How could you construct a story sack to make it suitable for traveling the globe? What would you put in your story sack?

For many people story sacks are all about the collecting of props and having a lovely neat bag of goodies. But this is not the key for me. For me it is about the storytelling and having a few props that bring the story to life. A story sack is a great help, but developing excellent storytelling skills is a lifelong passion, and your skills are something you can take with you everywhere you go.

There are many ways of looking at storytelling skills. In this article, Raymond Le Banc suggests that there are 4 key points to great storytelling:

- Ensure your presence is prominent
- Connect with and engage your audience
- Interact with your audience
- Teach something

If you are struggling to find appropriate characters to include in your story sacks, you could make your own. They don’t need to be perfect, and making puppets is a great activity for a group. You could get the children to make the puppets for the story sack or to create their own version of the main characters.

As inspiration, here are three puppet maker sites:

Judy’s art dolls

Danielle’s place

Making friends

And if you are looking for other activities that you can do with your puppets, how about a rap with many children joining in. You may not as polished as this, but you should have fun trying …

… but another beautiful and engaging way of telling a story. In fact, it is mainly material sheets that are used here. These and an accompanying soundtrack would make a great storysack.

There are some lovely things demonstrated in this video …

- There is a lot of involvement from others, rather than just the story teller
- Each time the sack is used, the central activity could be group construction of a new boat
- The materials are a lovely, vibrant, tactile medium for the story
- The scale of the scenery immerses the audience in the experience

World Storytelling Day

World Storytelling Day is a global celebration of the art of oral storytelling. It is celebrated every year on the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn equinox in the southern. On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languages and at as many places as possible, during the same day and night. Participants tell each other about their events in order to share stories and inspiration, to learn from each other and create international contacts.

This is a great opportunity to use a story sack to bring the story to life. 

This year’s theme is ‘Neighbours’. Dream big, and let everyone know about your plans!

To subscribe to the WSD email discussion list, send a message to: storytellingday-subscribe@pytte.net.
Let people know about your event by posting information on the World Storytelling Forum or by emailing some information to Dale Jarvis, the (sometimes very busy and entirely unpaid) webmaster at storytelling@nf.sympatico.ca for inclusion on the Events & Activities page.

Go on - tell your story!

An interesting idea for using a story sack with younger children is to use it as an opportunity to teach them signing.

It can be very frustrating trying to communicate with children before they can talk. They know what they want to say, you know that they know what they want to say, and both of you want them to say it, but they can’t!

There are a number of excellent books that you can include in your story sack as a non-fiction prop like this from Monica Beyer.

Learning that is reinforced at both school and home is much more effective that learning in only one of these.

A story sack is a great way to promote this as it can be used in both. However, one of the main barriers to this is lack of confidence. A great way to tackle this is through demonstrations. Whether you are a parent or educator you can show other adults who will interact with your child how to use a story sack to reinforce in all environments.

Here are some ideas to using demonstrations with other adult to promote the use of your story sack at both home and school:

- Take time to unpack the story sack and talk about how each element can be used

- Share a discussion on the educational outcomes that are important and how the story sack can be used to support these

- Demonstrate the way that you tell the story and ask for feedback

- Ask for help (always a good way to build a relationship) in developing the story sack or with ideas to promote its use in other groups

- You can also do all of these with children - you will get some very honest feedback!

Go on - if you don’t do it, who will?

   

 

 

 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Eric Carle’s classic children’s book is 40 this year. Happy Birthday!

Originally published in 1969, the idea for the book came from a hole puncher …

“One day I was punching holes with a hole puncher into a stack of paper, and I thought of a bookworm and so I created a story called ‘A Week with Willi the Worm’. Then my editor suggested a caterpillar instead and I said ‘Butterfly!’ That’s how it began.”

Eric’s website has an excellent bulletin board where teachers and parents using Eric Carle’s books in creative ways can submit their ideas.

Visit our resources page for the book.