The backdrop is sturdy and stands up well. We set it up and assembled the shadow puppets and the light.
The children had to figure out for themselves the best position for the light and puppets to enable the shadows to reflect onto the backdrop. I feel that a page of instructions may have been helpful although there is also a part of me that liked them having to work it out for themselves. Perhaps a little section in the book about the science of shadows would be good?
The puppets are made of sturdy black card and the sticks have Velcro attachments so you can change the position if desired. I can see these being popular in a pre-school especially as a prop for an overhead projector. I would introduce the materials using the rhyming book and then let the children create their own stories.
My children enjoyed inventing their own story with the puppets.
Black Forest Theater – Dinosaurs retails for $29.99
Disclaimer: No payment was received for writing this review, we received a product for review purposes.
I recently cleaned out the linen cupboard and gave the kids a huge bag of old sheets to play with. They like to make-up stories and turn them into royal capes or build dens with them. In amongst them was a white sheet. I thought it could be used to build a shadow puppet theatre in the garden. We have a swing set that isn’t safe to use, so I removed one of the swings and fastened the sheet to the frame.
The children and I made puppets from cardboard. The children chose characters and I helped them draw them in silhouette. They collected sticks from the garden, whittled them to smooth them out and stuck the cardboard characters on with tape.
I also found images of hand shadows. I printed and laminated them and stuck them on the swing set frame for reference.
We had to do a bit of work cutting back the tree branches to make a clear screen, but soon it was ready. The magical stories they have created have been wonderful. I think this would be a great resource for a school or pre-school to encourage story telling and build the foundations of story writing. You could build it outdoors or inside with a light source behind.
Videoing the story showed the children where they needed to improve. They saw that sometimes you couldn’t see the characters well because they were too low or placed at an angle. They also noticed that the size of the puppet changed according to how close to the screen it was.
I love the way my daughter played with accents and voices. It particularly love the voice of the bird and banana man in the land of the forgotten.
Disclaimer the links to books referenced in this post, contain Amazon Affiliate Links.
Many years ago, I attended a training course where we were encouraged to follow the acronym OWLSin our teacher-child interactions. OWLS stood for
Observe
Wait
Listen
Speak
Children are naturally full of curiosity. Sometimes questions are asked as a way of thinking out loud and sometimes asked directly to obtain an answer from an adult. In both scenarios, if we follow OWLS we will discover a great deal about the children’s way of thinking and enable them to provide their own hypotheses.
If we are to support, rather than limit, children’s developing understanding, we need to allow them to help us recapture some of the wonder and innocence we have lost and to gain insight into their struggles to make sense of what is often a confusing and worrying world. Teaching is not about imposing our views, concerns or values on others. It is about enabling children to carry out their own investigations and draw their own conclusions. (Margaret Edgington – The Nursery Teacher in Action)
My children watched the fluff flying around the playground and wondered what it was. I’m not sure if they wanted a direct answer from me or a means of discussing possibilities together. I took it as the latter and listened to their thoughts.
The children used their existing knowledge about fairies, clouds, snow and cushion fillers to create hypotheses. They also borrowed ideas from the familiar story Cloudland by John Birningham to create a new story. Their answers could be a springboard to a project where the children create worlds, stories and characters involving the mysterious fluff.
Jerome Bruner explains that when we see children as thinkers, understanding is fostered through collaboration and discussion. The child is encouraged to express their views to achieve a meeting of minds with others with different views.
As the discussion ensued, the girls used their senses to explore the material and build on what they already know about the world to find answers. My role was to build an exchange of understanding between the two children and myself, to find the roots of the children’s systematic knowledge.
As we turned the corner we found a clump of the fluffy stuff.
The children began to construct even more elaborate stories, connecting with worlds they had previously imagined.
Encouraging these moments to develop into projects is described by Carolyn Edwards in The Hundred Languages of Children. She describes the role of the teacher in Reggio Schools.
The teachers constantly pay close attention to the children’s activity. They believe that when children work on a project of interest to them, they will naturally encounter problems and questions they will want to investigate. The teachers’ role is to help the children discover their own problems and questions. At that point, moreover, they will not offer ready solutions but instead help children to focus on a problem or difficulty and formulate hypotheses. Their goal is not so much to facilitate learning in the sense of making it smooth or easy, but rather to stimulate it by making problems more complex, involving or arousing. They ask the children what they need in order to do experiments – even when they realise that a particular approach or hypothesis is not “correct”. They serve as the children’s partners, sustaining the children and offering assistance, resources and strategies to get unstuck when encountering difficulties – Carolyn Edwards.
I wonder how many rich learning opportunities are missed in our school system because there isn’t time to slow down and teach in this way? Perhaps, all the more reason to share these experiences with our children when they are at home.
The children went on to discuss the ‘fluff’ with their friends. One friend told them it comes from a tree and they thought it was Dogwood. The next question was ‘What is a dogwood tree?’. This will be the next step in their discoveries.
Fear of the dark is fairly common amongst young children. It often arises around the age of two or three when their imaginations develop and they begin pretend play. Often, children become fearful about what might be lurking in the darkness but sometimes it is also tied up with other anxieties.
Sharing a book is the perfect way to invite a child to talk about their fears. Children’s fears are real so it helps to listen to them and work out strategies for alleviating fears together . When my daughter was young, she developed an extreme fear of darkness, so bad that she would cower and cry if I left the curtains open as it was getting dark. It turned out that she had very poor eyesight but was too young to articulate it. When it was dark, she could barely see anything at all. Once her eyes were tested and she wore glasses, her fear was more manageable. She still gets scared sometimes when she gets up in the night, but having a night-light by her bed (preferably one she can carry) helps a lot. When her fear was at its height, sharing stories helped a lot. I even wrote a book just for her, about a magic elf that she could call upon whenever she was scared.
Fears are helped when children can talk to you about them and what better way to start a conversation than reading a good book together. Below are some of my favourites; let me know in the comments if you have any other suggestions.
The Moon Inside by Sandra V. Feder, illustrated by Aimee Sicuro
This new title, is the story of Ella who grows more comfortable with darkness as her mother gently encourages her to appreciate nature’s night-time wonders. Ella’s favourite colour is yellow and she feels sad as the yellow disappears at dusk. The illustrations move from an indoor world of yellow, black and white to an outdoor twilight of green, red, blue and oranges. Ella looks and listens as she explores with her mother and finds many beautiful things. She finally decides that if she leaves fewer lights on inside, then she can experience the glow of the moon from her bedroom.
Talking points for children
What can you see at night?
What can you hear at night?
Does it feel darker inside or outside?
How does it feel to look out of your window at night?
What would happen if we didn’t have night? What would you miss?
2. The Dark by Lemony Snicket, illustrated by Jon Klassen
Lazlo is afraid of the dark but the dark usually lives in the basement. That is until one night when the dark, in its personified form, enters Lazlo’s bedroom and takes him on a journey through the house to the basement. Once there, the dark shows him a drawer where he finds night-light bulbs and Lazlo and the dark live in harmony ever after. This book combines sumptuous, descriptive text with pictures that show the stark contrast between the shiny blackness and the light of the flashlight.
Talking points for children
What does dark look like?
What does dark feel like?
What can we do to make the dark feel different?
3. Can’t you Sleep Little Bear by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Barbara Firth
This timeless classic tells the story of Big Bear and Little Bear. Little Bear can’t go to sleep because he is afraid of the darkness all around. Big Bear brings lamps of different sizes to help Little Bear, but he is still afraid. When Little Bear still can’t sleep, Big Bear takes him outside to see the light of the moon and stars. Finally convinced that he is safe, he falls asleep in Big Bear’s arms, in front of a warm fire. If comfort food came in book form, this would be it.
Talking points for children
What helps you when you can’t sleep?
Why aren’t grown-ups afraid of the dark?
How do you feel when you look up to the sky when it is dark?
4. The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson, illustrated by Paul Howard
Another timeless classic, this time in early chapter book format. Plop is a barn owl, but unlike all of his friends, Plop thinks the dark is scary. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of darkness as Plop learns through his many adventures, that dark is exciting, kind, fun, necessary, fascinating, wonderful and beautiful. This is a perfect read-aloud book for young children.
Talking points for children.
Why do you think dark is fun, fascinating, beautiful etc.?
Can you think of other adjectives to describe the dark?
Have you ever been convinced by someone else that something you thought was scary wasn’t actually that frightening at all?
5. I’m Coming to Get You by Tony Ross
I first came across this picture book as part of a children’s literature module back in my student days and it is a personal favourite. Though not strictly about a fear of the dark, it is a book about putting fears into perspective. As a creature from outer space hurtled towards Earth, it warns Tommy , “I’m coming to get you”. Tommy searches for it as he goes off to bed but can’t find it. In the morning, the monster gets ready to pounce, only to find that he is smaller than a matchstick in the human world.
Talking points for children
If you could squish one fear with your shoe, what would it be?
What things are you scared of that might in reality be more frightened by you?
All 3 of my girls had the same favourite book at the age of 2. I didn’t encourage it, but somehow ‘The Elephant and the Bad Baby’ by Elfrida Vipoint hit the spot for all of them.
The story is highly repetitive, so much so that it drove my husband insane every time he read it. It is also quite long.
So why would it be so popular?
The repetitive text is most likely what they love the most.
Repetition is important for young children as it helps them to remember and learn. Knowing what comes next is comforting in a generally unpredictable world. Small children love repetition, it means that they can join in and demonstrate how much they know. As they hear the story language time and again, they come to anticipate words and phrases and will insert the vocabulary if the reader pauses at key points, as seen in the video clip. They will even correct you if you get it wrong (as I did). Children, as they become older, memorise repetitive books and can be seen to be ‘reading’ them to themselves, before they can actually read the text. This is a very important starting point for learning to read.
‘ Let’s just go camping for our Summer holiday this year’
Hold on a moment, did those words really come from my mouth? Until my mid twenties I recoiled in horror at the thought of camping. After I left girl guide camp half way through the week because I hated it so much, I convinced myself that camping wasn’t for me. In truth, I didn’t hate it at all. A rumour that newcomers would be pushed in the cesspit if they didn’t pass initiation had worried me so much that I begged to go home. My views changed after a few great camping trips as an adult but I’d never have considered a camping trip for my main holiday.
A yearning to explore the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, good weather and the children’s eagerness to go camping, convinced me it was a good idea. An eight hour car journey with a canoe on top of the car, three young children, a dog and a heatwave; perhaps I had lost my mind?
Amazingly, the car journey was fine. The first couple of hours were spent playing ‘would you rather….’ and guessing the names of characters from books or screen. The rest of the journey we listened to cd’s of musicals and admired the view.
Our destination Curlew Lake State Park, chosen for its beauty, a place for the children to swim and for my husband and the girls to go fishing. “Fishing!” I hear my 20- year-old self, with an irrational fear of fish exclaim, ” are you intent on sending me on the holiday from hell?” Strangely none of those sentiments cross my mind as we set up the tent in a quiet corner of the campsite on the shore of the Lake.
Without a shop or a playground in sight, would the children be happy? For now the excitement of sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking outside and trying to catch their first fish fuelled their enthusiasm.
They were eager to go to the beach to swim. I was amazed that we were the only people on the beach. The ground wasn’t soft like the lake at home but filled with slippery algae. It didn’t put them off. They used the algae and stones to create patterns on the ground and then set up their own foot spa, spreading the algae over their feet and washing it off.
The Foot SpaI sat and watched from a distance, joining in when they asked me to. At that moment I knew why this holiday was no longer my biggest nightmare. The children were immersed in the moment, playing, discovering and sharing. In the distance, my husband was on the lake in the canoe and I was here in a rare moment of quiet. This wasn’t one of those family holidays where we rushed to cram in every little experience. I’m sure that these unhurried moments are the ones they will remember most.
There was a child went forth everyday,
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became.
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
WaltWhitman
They found magic in the simple things.
Look I think Eeyore has been here
Maybe it’s his barbecue?
Really! Do you think so?
musing over a blade of grass building sculpturesMy eldest had big girl time with dad, paddling the canoe at sunrise. Nights weren’t the most restful we had ever had, with five people and a dog in the same tent but there are few things more peaceful than the middle of a lake in the early morning.
It didn’t take us long to understand the rhythms of nature; the time of day that the deer would wander down the hill to visit, geese would fly across the lake, fish would start to bite or that darkness would fall.
Sometimes though, nature takes you by surprise. One night, as we were snuggled in the porch of the tent telling stories, the poles holding the porch open, fell down. As if from nowhere, the winds whipped up and tugged at the tent. Before we knew it dad and big sister had us zipped up inside while they battled against the wind and dust to secure the tent. I tried to drown out the rangers talk of trees blowing down, by telling the story of ‘My Favourite Things’ from the ‘Sound of Music’ and singing. Enraptured, the little ones soon forgot about the storm. They implored me to tell the story of ‘The Sound of Music’- the whole story, all 3 hours of it complete with every song. Thankfully the storm was short, the tent and trees survived and unlike my 11-year old self, I didn’t get the urge to run home.
One of the reasons for choosing Curlew Lake was the fishing, so in the early evenings we took the canoe out to explore the lake and try to catch fish. The girls had only ever caught small fish and were eager to catch one they could eat. Our family trips in the canoe lacked the quiet and patience needed to catch anything of note. However, on the last day their wish came true. Our neighbouring campers, who visit every year to fish, offered to take us out in their boat and help the girls to catch trout. The fish came one after the other.
Here we go My first fishThen the fish got bigger
They were so proud of their catch.
After the holiday, fishing has become a regular pastime. When dad goes out on his own, the girls greet him eagerly to see if he has caught anything we can eat. Other times, we all go to the lake together and mix up fishing with swimming and playing. On a recent trip, we explored the river bank , a place we probably would never have visited if it weren’t for fishing . Watching the girls excitement at their discoveries and creating with sticks and stones was magical. We returned home with a pile of sticks and ideas for making things with them. Moments like this are important for all of us. Resting our minds through daydreaming and play increases productivity and creativity says Daniel Levitin author of ‘The Organized Mind’. Without time for spontaneity, children lack the mental space to come up with new ideas and ways of doing things.
It makes a big splash. Plop! Drawing with sticks on rocks building a xylophone Let’s see how many ‘Y’ sticks we can find. Look what it can do.As I looked out across the river at the jumping fish, the blue skies and the green trees, I could picture an old couple; man fishing, wife painting the landscape or writing in a notebook. I suppose fishing isn’t so bad after all. I’m happy to spend many more years waiting for the fish.
As an Early Years teacher I have always capitalised on opportunities for literacy in everyday life. Making children aware and involving them in these things is often key to children viewing reading and writing as fun. Traditionally these would have been things like writing shopping lists, reading road and shop signs, mark making in diaries and calendars or following recipes.
However literacy in the real world is changing. Children these days are just as likely to see you read or write on your phone or laptop as they are to see you write a list or note.
This really hit home with me when I watched my 3 year old playing on my iPad a few weeks ago. She asked if she could download an app called Dad book, designed for dads to record stories for their children.
But mummy it’s not doing anything
she said once it was downloaded.
No, someone has to tell the story and record it.
I replied.
I asked her 7 year old sister to record the story for her, they sat together as my 7 year old narrated the story. When she was finished my 3 year old listened and then repeated the words as she had seen done with another app Pat the Cat .
What a great opportunity for playing with literacy for both children. This made me think about all the other literacy activities my children tap into on the iPad.
My 3 year old is learning about the alphabet and phonic sounds using the wonderful Elmo loves ABC’s app. This has loads of different levels of games all based around learning letter names and sounds and includes lots of memorable Sesame Street clips.
Another favourite is Me Books a children’s picture book reader for classic Ladybird books. Both my children enjoy following the stories and adding in their own sound effects. This is simple for the children to do and another great way of getting different aged siblings to share reading.
The Ladybird Touch and Say books are also a great way for my 2 year old to learn to read simple words and even my one year old loves the Baby Touch app.
My 7 year old loves creating her own stories and animations using Toontastic or Puppetpals and these are also simple for pre-schoolers to use with adult guidance.
We have even discovered new songs and rhymes through English Songs and Chants. My 3 year old loves this one and can be heard walking around the house reciting the chants and singing the songs. The chants are excellent for teaching rhythm and steady beat, a concept I usually teach using Ros Bayley’s Beat Baby. I wonder whether Ros has considered creating a Beat Baby app?
There are a number of things that I really appreciate about the way my children use technology to play and learn about literacy.
The children freely choose the literacy apps and never feel like they are learning literacy skills. Everything they choose to play is fun and interactive.
The apps are an added dimension to their experience of literacy. They still love books and choose to read traditional books more often than e-books, still love to write, tell and listen to stories.
Current touch screen technology is still a little small to offer good mark making experiences for the youngest children but the drawing apps are good fun for when they get a bit older and are able to work on a smaller scale. I look forward to a time when I can roll out a big screen onto the floor and let the youngest children explore markmaking on a large scale.
I also think Kinect holds great possibilities for literacy. My children talk to their dad via video Kinect when he is not at home. There would be great potential for speaking and listening activities if they connected with other children from around the world and shared experiences about their life and culture.
My girls are avid readers, I’m not afraid that new technology will distract them from traditional literacy, but that it adds a richness to their lives and new possibilities for exciting literacy experiences.
This week is National Storytelling Week. I was going to write about my experiences of story telling with young children. However,something else that I have been talking about this week seems to relate very well to story telling.
I have been having a sort out of the endless ‘stuff’ we accumulate in our house. One part of that has been to thin out all the things we have stored that we never use and collate our photographs in one place. During this process my husband found a box full of old letters, certificates and notebooks which contain memories that would otherwise be forgotten. We looked at photos of years gone by and the way that we remember things. I also had a conversation relating to memory with a neighbour who recently had a large family gathering. She talked about how when they all got together and talked about past shared events, they each remembered it differently.
How much of our lives get lost because we don’t document it? When we need to find evidence of how we felt, often we can only say, I don’t remember it like that but maybe that is how it was. Sometimes I wish I had documented my life so that I could look back and say with confidence , that is what happened, this is how it happened and this is how I felt.
At times I have kept diaries, mostly during my teenage years. I was so embarrassed by my thoughts when I came across them years later, that I threw them away but a part of me wishes I hadn’t. I have kept diaries of my pregnancies and early days of the children because the children won’t remember those times. I hope that one day I will be here to answer their questions about it but maybe, like my own mother, I will be gone by the time those questions arise. I kept a journal during my honeymoon, I don’t often read it but sometimes it’s comforting to look back on the best times in your life.
My point is that when we think of story telling we automatically think of fiction, but our lives are a story – often the most interesting stories come from real events. What may seem irrelevant or waffly thoughts right now will someday mean something to our children and grandchildren. My most treasured possession is a letter that my mother wrote when she was in hospital after having me. My dad found it after she had died and it is my only account of how she felt to be a mother for the first time . Stories don’t have to be about dragons and adventures, let’s not forget that our own stories matter too. For National Storytelling week I will not tell a story but will try to begin to tell my story so that I don’t forget and will not be forgotten.
Since investing in a Samson C01U Studio Condenser USB microphone, this has been a regular request from my 2 year old. It was originally intended as a means of recording music and voice for rehearsal purposes, for listing on audioboo or creating cd resources. However, once my 2 year old had tried it out , she was addicted. She sings into the microphone and then sits down to listen to it back. This got me thinking about how it would be an extremelly useful resource for schools and nurseries for both music and literacy. Older children could be encouraged to record and edit their performances (we use audacity for this) and would be especially useful in the teaching of dynamics.
I recently attended a talk about Vivian Paley’s ideas for creating story circles. In these young children tell their stories to a teacher and then the group come together to act them out with the author taking the main part in the story. There was some discussion as to how time consuming it was to record the stories in written form . If the stories were recorded into a computer and converted to mp3 format this would enable the stories to be recorded quickly and easily and if my 2 year old is typical , I would also imagine that most children would be eager to have a turn. It would also help to build reluctant writers storytelling skills without the anxiety of having to write it down. Since children’s ability to tell a story verbally is a pre-requisite to story writing then this would be a wonderful tool for children in their first years of school. http://audioboo.fm/rightfromthestart
Right from the Start 