New Term Session 6

New Term   Session 6

The last session with this group - and I was feeling a bit more confident. I had fount 3 new stories to try!

The success of 'Turtle of Koka' last time prompted me to start by asking if they wanted to hear it again. The answer was a resounding, 'Yes!' - and the story worked beautifully, just as before.

This put all of us into a good mood and I was encouraged to move on to the new stories. First came Margaret Read MacDonald's 'Turkey Girl' - a simple tale of a girl who loses her turkeys because she wanted to dance. I had only the one prop - a bright, soft turkey - but there were lots of opportunities for turkey gobbling noises and a bit of drumming on the arms of the chair. It worked ok and I will try it again with the next group.

Then came 'SuLi and the Elephant', based on 'Unanana and the Elephant' by Papa Joe. Lots of props in this one... SuLi, her Little Cousin, her 3 children, various animals and a huge elephant - plus SuLi's cooking pot and her sharp knife. In this story SuLi has to rescue her children from the elephant's stomach - a variant on Jonah and the Whale and other such tales. It worked well but I could tell it better. It is good to now have a series of three SuLi stories.

The children insisted on one more story and I had found a very short one - Margaret Read MacDonald's 'A Lover of Dragons' - it is very simple indeed - a rich man loves dragons and has paintings and sculptures of them everywhere - but is terrified when a real dragon comes to call. Again, I think I could tell it better and will work on it for the next group.

Only the very youngest children drifted away this time. I did have to suggest a couple of the others put their books away until we had finished, which was a shame as they were sharing a discussion about the pictures, but it was very distracting.