I must admit that I have a tendency to be a bit lazy with my imagination. Books are all too easy to pick up and let the pictures build up what the words don't say. Today we went to our Steiner Playgroup for the second time and had the story of 'Billy Goats Gruff' acted out with wooden toys and pieces of fabric while the teacher gave the oral version. It wasn't a version full of detail by any means however all the children sat memorized by the fact that a story and the toys were in action together. Coming from a country which has a strong oral tradition is was great to finally encounter story telling without a book in sight.
When talking to the teacher she explained that the reason for the storytelling is to model it for the children, encouraging them to create their own stories with the toys. It was a big reminder to me that I need to get in there more and model play. To my credit, modest as I am, I have actually done this once before with our oldest and some play dough. Once is the key thing here as I never continued with it in different situations and once the youngest arrived the energy and mental ability wasn't there. I decided today that I would put the teacher's modelling into practice.
We re-told several stories with different toys and objects from outside as well as combining nursery rhymes into stories and creating our own. The fantastic thing was that after this our oldest was happy for a large chunk of the afternoon, having her own story time. Often I desperately want our kids to just go and play however it never works like that! The most successful play is when they continue on from something that I have begun or given them ideas about.
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