A full week of fun activities geared toward telling folktales and personal tales was had by all of our camp participants. This was my second year to be asked to facilitate the art of storytelling with blind and low vision kids at the San Antonio Lighthouse for the Blind and vision impaired. I partnered up with friend Sara Pacina who's talent lies in drama/theater so we could combine storytelling and theater to create unique opportunities for these enthusiastic children that ranged in age from 3rd to 6th grade. We knew there would be obstacles such as reading text, movement, and drawing so we planned ahead knowing that flexibility was the key to success. I'd like to share with you over the next few blog posts our storytelling activities and skill building that led to our culminating storytelling concert held on Friday, June 22. I'm hoping you'll gather how much fun it was to work with a diverse group of children who truly loved every moment with each other and took in every activity with gusto! Please feel free to use our activities in your classrooms, camps, workshops and modify them to fit your needs.
We would sit in a circle each morning around our campfire in the library and begin our day of stories and songs. Of course, we had to create the wood burning fire with our imagination. We rubbed our hands together to create the sound of kindling burning while we blew lightly into our hands. Once our fire got going we made sure the kindling was under the larger logs. As the fire grew, we would snap our fingers to create sparks and fire pops from the logs. We'd smack the top of our fisted hand with our other hand. I would guild them through the visual to make sure all could see the fire in their imaginations. And then the storytelling could begin. I modeled storytelling with my favorite easy folktale called "Dark, Dark Woods."
"Dark, Dark Woods" Storyboard Activity
Click HERE for a version of this short folktale which is a jump tale. I tell the bare bones of the tale and try not to add too much detail so I can teach the kids how to create a storyboard with the story sequenced correctly. The kids love this scary story and will easily decide what is in the dark, dark box (ghost, mouse, black widow spider, ants, scorpions - yuck) Be ready for anything!
DIRECTIONS:
1. From our campfire, we move to the tables so 8.5" x 11" individual sheets of paper can be handed to each child. We fold the paper into 6 equal boxes.
2. We number the boxes 1 - 6 from left to right. The first box is typically where we write the TITLE of the story and it's author, if known.
3. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end so we discuss how important it is to make sure we know the beginning and the end. So, we talked about what was most important to remember in the beginning of the tale and at the end of the tale. We write and draw pictures on boxes 2 and 6. I relate this learning a joke: you have to know the beginning of a joke and then the punchline of a joke or you don't have a joke!
4. Finally, we fill in the remaining boxes, which is really the plot (boxes 3-5) We talk about this together around our table and then fill them all in with help given when needed. Our blind kids were amazing. Leo used Wikki Stix to create his pictures and used a braille typer to write down his bare bones of the story.
4. We paired up and told "Dark, Dark, Woods" to each other using our new storyboards. Here's some pictures:
DIRECTIONS:
1. From our campfire, we move to the tables so 8.5" x 11" individual sheets of paper can be handed to each child. We fold the paper into 6 equal boxes.
2. We number the boxes 1 - 6 from left to right. The first box is typically where we write the TITLE of the story and it's author, if known.
3. Every story has a beginning, middle, and end so we discuss how important it is to make sure we know the beginning and the end. So, we talked about what was most important to remember in the beginning of the tale and at the end of the tale. We write and draw pictures on boxes 2 and 6. I relate this learning a joke: you have to know the beginning of a joke and then the punchline of a joke or you don't have a joke!
4. Finally, we fill in the remaining boxes, which is really the plot (boxes 3-5) We talk about this together around our table and then fill them all in with help given when needed. Our blind kids were amazing. Leo used Wikki Stix to create his pictures and used a braille typer to write down his bare bones of the story.
4. We paired up and told "Dark, Dark, Woods" to each other using our new storyboards. Here's some pictures:
 | Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss' book Stories in My Pocket is one of the best short story collections to teach storytelling to children because great tips are written on the right side of story text to help the kids with voice and gestures. I knew reading this small font was going to be a huge problem for our young tellers so I got permission for Mitch and Martha to record a handful of their tales so the kids had easy listening access to the stories. The link to my recordings is HERE. |
The San Antonio Lighthouse Director of Children Services, Carrilee Adkins gave us access to their iPads and individual earbuds for each child to listen to the stories. They were so engrossed with listening that we felt pretty certain that they were able to hear each of the six stories that I had chosen. Each story is quite short - almost a barebones story which turned out perfect because we were able to help the kids add detail and description to the story/stories they each ended up choosing.
After taking time to listen to these stories over two days at camp, the kids got busy writing down their barebones on the folded six box storyboard that was described above using "The Dark, Dark Woods." The folktales chosen by each child were the ones we helped them out with for the remainder of the week through skill building activities and games. Please tune into my next post to hear all about them.
I'd love to hear from you. Please feel free to ask questions, give out more ideas and activities. We will all benefit!
After taking time to listen to these stories over two days at camp, the kids got busy writing down their barebones on the folded six box storyboard that was described above using "The Dark, Dark Woods." The folktales chosen by each child were the ones we helped them out with for the remainder of the week through skill building activities and games. Please tune into my next post to hear all about them.
I'd love to hear from you. Please feel free to ask questions, give out more ideas and activities. We will all benefit!
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