National Storytelling Week
Are you all sitting comfortably? We’d like to tell you a tale about the wonderful world of stories!
National Storytelling Week takes place every year and is a celebration of the power of sharing stories. Stories teach us about the world, they allow us to step into someone else’s shoes and feel empathy, they help us to relax and escape and they can help develop essential literacy skills. To celebrate storytelling week, taking place from 30 January to 5 February 2023, we went on some magical adventures into our favourite books. From crafts to small world play, cooking and role play to outside escapades at Forest School – we love to use all the resources at our disposal to inspire our children.
At Chalfont St Peter we had a very animal themed week! We looked at The Hungry Caterpillar. We loved creating a very “hungry” themed snack and chose some of our favourite items from the book. We enjoyed making caterpillar finger print pictures too! In Baby Room we visited the 3 Bears and made some yummy blueberry porridge – one was hot, one was cold and one was just right! We enjoyed feeding some to Goldilocks too. We love the book Dear Zoo, so we chose our favourite animals and decorated them with coloured tissue. We then created a zoo in our tuff tray and really liked role playing with the small world animals. We thought about some bigger animals and went on a Bear Hunt around the classroom. We practised prepositions like under, over, around and through in different areas which caused lots of giggling!
At Watermead we were very lucky to have some of our fabulous families join us for story time. We had mums, grandmas and dads all share their favourite books which included uninvited tigers, books in other languages and ducks. It was so important to model all sorts of different adults enjoying reading too!
At Farnborough we had a fantastic time talking about the book Little Rabbit Foo Foo by Michael Rosen. We talked all about the different voices you can use when telling a story to bring it to life and how the words in a book tell us what to say when reading. We learnt that words weren’t just in books but all around us! We put this into practice by looking at food labels during cooking activities.
Leighton Buzzard Went on a very exciting Bear Hunt. It started in a tuff tray and ended up in a giant bear cave in the classroom! Nursery Rhymes were also featured. There were 5 little ducks on their trip to the canal to feed them, Old McDonald mark making and water trays to see Incey Wincey get washed down the drain pipe. There were 3 little pig faces on paper plates and some pig-tastic role play! We also made The Gingerbread man. They were fantastic at measuring out all the ingredients!
There was plenty of Room on the Broom for the children, some wand making in Forest School, a witchy treasure hunt in the garden and lots of practise flying on our broomsticks. We learnt all about how you can listen to adults you know reading, listen to audio books or read to yourself.
At Maple Cross we practised the art of storytelling using picture books. We loved seeing the children’s imaginations run wild as they deciphered the pictures to tell us what they thought might be happening. We saw character development, plot twists and lots of lovely language on show!
Oving offered us plenty of fabulous activities in their celebrations. They made some great 3 little pig puppets and enjoyed acting out the story. Carrying on the crafting theme they also made some brilliant colourful fish using a variety of materials after enjoying the story of “Stanley Fish” and some magical wands after reading Room on The Broom. They also showed some impressive fine motor skills making Elmer the Elephant as they cut, stuck and coloured. We loved seeing their Duplo versions and marvelled at their imaginations. We loved having parents come in to share their favourite stories with all the children too!
We hope you have found the joy in reading this as much as our children have from a fantastic week!
