When planning how to carry out storytime sessions, early years practitioners need to consider the range of stories and themes that they can use, the variety of props that can enhance their storytelling and other ways in which storytime can be developed.
MATERIAL
* Use different sorts of material (songs, chants, stories from picture-books, stories without books) to create a varied atmosphere with different levels of listening and engagement.
* Choose picture-books with illustrations which children can see from a distance and avoid those where there is a lot of text per page.
* Bring in factual books where information and pictures can add another dimension - for example, a book on China to support a Chinese story.
* Picture-book stories without text, only pictures, can have a calming effect. You may quietly suggest the story as you turn the pages, drawing attention to the relevant pictures.
THEMES
* Building your storytime around a theme makes the session more coherent.
* Themes can be to do with all kinds of things - the time of year, forthcoming festivals, nursery projects you are working on.
* Working with themes can help the storyteller to be more creative about linking appropriate stories, songs and props.
* Personal stories are especially useful in helping children make links between your themes and their own lives. An anecdote about a journey, for instance, could help the children to relate a journey story to their own experience and imagination.
THE MAGIC OF OBJECTS
* Props Putting a little imagination into storytime reaps unexpected benefits for you and your listeners. For all of us hard-pressed adults, it can be creative - and therefore relaxing - to spend time thinking up good ways to bring a story to life with objects and sounds.
Items from home can disappear into your story bag or prop box temporarily, and attract lots of interest from the children. Brought back home, they'll never seem the same again. Or organise a staff competition - with suitable prizes, of course - for putting together the best set of props for a story. You will be amazed what people come up with - and the results can be used again and again.
* Prop box Children can help make a wonderful prop box that can have a permanent place in your storytime area. Contents could go with a larger scene created in that space. In a seashore scene, for instance, a prop box might include shells, a bucket and spade, yards of blue cloth, and so on.
Or your prop box might be your own special preserve that you bring out for storytime. It could contain some good sound-making objects - for instance, a chain for rattling or a bottle for blowing into to make the sound of the wind -as well as all kinds of ordinary items to look at and handle. Pebbles or pieces of wood can be of considerable interest. But precious objects are not a good idea unless you know your group will not grab at them and accidentally damage them.
* Story sacks Some people buy commercially-made story sacks (Storysack Ltd, tel: 0161 763 6232, fax: 0161 763 5366). Others make their own version, and find it a wonderful way to draw on the knitting and embroidery skills of family members. Dolls made to go with a particular story can be used in association with a baize board or some scenery you create - for instance, a little house for The Three Bears. But beware! Lovely story sacks can sit on shelves unused if people are not confident about telling the story and getting down on their knees and showing children how to play with the objects.
* Story bags A variation is to make up story bags in which you place a copy of a picture-book and small items that go with it. Zipped plastic envelopes make a good basis for the idea and are easy to store.
* Story boxes Or make your own story box, containing items for a story you have chosen to tell. There is great fascination when you first get it out: what is going to be inside? The objects are often far more helpful than pictures for assisting children to get the idea of a story. They are especially good for children learning English as a second language.
FOLLOW-UP IDEAS
* Make pictures of the story. Invite children to choose part of the story you've told and to make a picture of it. While they are working, talk to individual children about what they are doing. Question them gently - 'Tell me about this partI' - and you may discover that they've put something new in their picture, perhaps the seed of a fresh story. When they've finished, ask individuals to form a sentence about their picture for you to write at the bottom of their page. Display the results - maybe in sequence. Or make a book which the children could use to help them retell the original story as well as any new ones which have come out of it.
* Make story maps. Stories which have journeys in them are great as a basis for story mapping. You could start by making a big story map. With The Gingerbread Man, for example, your map would start with the oven, continue with a road that passes the various animals that want to eat him and end with the river. Children could help you make a big story map before making their own, possibly working in pairs so they talk to each other about the story. You could help with pre-prepared sheets showing the basic path of the story. Supply suitable bits and bobs for sticking on the maps that can become transformed into exciting collage pictures which the children will love to show to each other when they have finished.
* Make more props. Some stories lend themselves to prop making. For an animal story, you could make animal masks, or model houses, flowers, bridges and other items out of plasticine. Cut out stars for a star story. Or provide cut-out stars for the children to decorate. Use the props for children's role play or when you retell the story to the group.
* Develop role play and drama from the story. While telling a story, you can involve children in acting out parts of it. Or prompt children to role play the story by setting up an area with items and locations from the story - for example, trees to denote a forest and a table draped with material for a cave for going on a bear hunt. Providing appropriate toys to play the parts of characters in the story leads into puppet plays.
* Prepare story boxes to stimulate children to make up their own stories. Fill shoe boxes each with a collection of objects along a particular theme - a farmyard scene, an underwater world, outer space. Decorate the outside of the boxes to suit. The children can then make their own choice of box to play with.
* Lend story bags, sacks or boxes to parents. It is a good way for parents to share the story with their children.
REPEATS
* Children may not appear to appreciate a story the first time you tell it. Often they are just taking it in.
* Returning to the same story in the next session - and again in several more -gives children the chance to get to know it and to participate more fully.
* As children get to know the story, you can involve them more and more. They can answer your questions, come out to tell a section, join in repeated refrains.
* If children don't warm to a story, drop it and try something else.