Montage of Story Pages

I’ve put together a video that I hope gives a sense of what we got up to during this residency.

Thanks to everyone who made the project such a joy.

Space, The Final Frontier?

This week was the final week of my residency at the Glenbrae Children’s Centre and I was keen to make this final adventure something really special. And what better adventure than a trip to the moon?
Well how about a trip to the moon with some experienced guides. live music and a picnic?
This week I was joined by Chris and Kieran the Adventurers AKA Let’s Talk About Space.

The Story we were working with this week was ‘Whatever Next!’ by Jill Murphy a book that all the adventurers remembered fondly from childhood. Let’s Talk About Space even have a video inspired by the story.

So along with telling the story we also had a gig in the Nursery. It seemed to go down pretty well.

It was great to have the opportunity to invite children from all three rooms to come together and exciting to see so many parents come along too.

Not only was I joined by Chris, Kieran and Hannah, there was another adventurer with us today, or rather a very cheeky pigeon in the shape of Becki Gerrard.
After the fun we had with Becki when we read ‘Don’t let the pigeon drive the bus’ we decided to substitute the Owl Character in the story with a pigeon, keen to drive a space rocket.So after a trip to the moon, a story and some live music we were already for some cookies and juice. We stayed on the moon and shared a picnic there.I’ve had such an inspiring, exciting and creative time over the last 10 weeks at Glenbrae. It has been brilliant meeting the staff and Children and a treat to get to work with other excellent artists exploring these books.

Thank you to Rhona and Catherine at Starcatchers, Julie at The Beacon, Hannah and all the other adventurers who have joined me, the Staff, Families and Children at Glenbrae Children’s Centre and a Extra Special Thank you to The Most Adventurous Adventurer of All, Moira.

Let The Wild Rumpus Start!

With such an iconic and well loved book this week felt a bit intimidating and like we really had to do the story justice. This was the first time that some of these children heard ‘Where the Wild Things Are’All of the children listened really intently to the story as I felt that it was important for them to hear the whole story before we started to play with it…We put some wild things face paints on along with our bobble hatsPracticed our ‘horrible roars’ and ‘horrible gnashing teeth’ and went outside.It was really great to run around and be wild with the children and nice to be able to make one of the stories come to life outside. Everyone really entered into being wild things.With the children in the Sunshine room, we focused more on the listening to the story, I had also taken one of the small cameras as they had responded so well to it a few weeks ago.It was brilliant to see the small group that we had so interested in the story, as we went through the picture section in the middle, Shannon pointed out each of the ‘wild things’ as we turned every page.I was also really pleased to see that, after last weeks session with the torches that the Sunshine room now have a set of rechargeable torches for the children to explore with.

We were joined this week by ‘Wild Thing’ Emily Magorrian who was a fantastic, mischievous addition to our team of adventurers!

 

 

 

 

 

Northern Lights

After the frantic and high energy Adventure last week, I was keen to try and take a gentler approach to our Adventure this week.We were joined by Adventurer and Musician, Joni Lindsay who helped to score our whole Storytelling experience with original, live music and an excellent track she had created to be played during our creation of the Northern Lights.Our book this week was another Catherine Rayner Story ‘Iris and Isaac’ about two polar bears who are not friends anymore. We tried to create a multi-sensory version of the story with lots of tactile props that Hannah passed around while I read the story and Joni played a simple accompaniment on the guitar.In the Story one of the polar bears sees the Northern Lights, and so did we!We armed each of the Children with a head torch and rolled out some textured white wallpaper. It was great experimenting and really feeling like we changed the environment. The staff and children seemed excited and involved with our version of this natural phenomena. 

Mid-Week Playtime

For the next three weeks, as well as running the Story Pages project at Glenbrae, I am also helping out Matt Addicott with his Playtime Project in the East of Glasgow.

We’re looking at Books too, well one in particular, ‘Press Here’.

 

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

This week we were playing with Mo Willams’ Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. We were armed with some simple cardboard props and a lot of energy.I was joined again this week by expert naughty pigeon Becki Gerrard. Becki’s Physical and expressive performance of the irate pigeon had bobble hatted adventurers from all three rooms engrossed and often giggling.

With a few children off sick from the Sunshine Room we invited some of the 0-2s from the Rainbow Room to come and join us on our afternoon adventure. They put their hats on and listened well, perhaps somewhat bemused.We played the adventurers song at the start and end of each of our sessions and the young people responded very well. In the morning we played and sang a calming lullaby version after the manic pigeon bus driving. And in the Sunshine room there were a couple of children who are interested in the guitar so it we played a couple of extra songs before we left to allow them a chance to hear more and play along.You’ll also be pleased to hear that the pigeon did not get to drive the bus until adequate training had been provided. 

 

 

 

All about the Hats!

Another week another adventure… hats on!
We were joined at Glenbrae this week by Performer/Artist/Adventurer Becki Gerrard for an exploration into Jon Klassen’s ‘I Want My Hat Back’. We were lucky to have Becki this week, not only is she a high energy, versatile performer, she’s also a dab hand with a needle and thread!After our great sessions with Oliver last week I decided it would be good to try and incorporate more music into the sessions. So I set to and wrote an Adventurers Song, with actions and everything.‘I Want My Hat Back’ is about a bear who has lost is hat. The staff at Glenbrae cunningly helped us hide the hat somewhere in the room and the children helped The Adventurers to find the it.

In the Butterfly Room they have been learning about Small, Medium and Big so we tried out a couple of different hats for the bear to have lost. We were also visited this week by 2 honorary adventurers Rhona from Starcatchers and Julie from The Beacon. Thanks for coming on the adventure!

Part time Adventurer, Musician and Bear.

We had another adventurer with us this week at Glenbrae. 
Oliver Ridgewell is a musician who works with a range of different groups and his enthusiasm meant he fitted in nicely with our team of adventurers

This week we were looking at Michael  Rosen’s ‘The Bear in the Cave’.
Oliver adapted the story into a song and we went through the book using music.

We stopped and started to get everyone up on there feet, to ask some questions and to do some splashing in imaginary puddles.

Oliver taught us a couple of other simple songs with lots of actions. It was great to see how long we managed to hold the attention of the 2-3s in the Sunshine room and the staff seemed impressed too.

Music seems to be a key part of allowing these children to be involved with the books.

After we had done our session we spent a bit of time in the Sunshine room, playing a few extra songs and working with individual children. One boy in particular was very interested in the camera. I spent a bit of time allowing him to use the small video camera and was really impressed by his directed focus.
Another girl showed a real interest in Oliver’s Guitar and together with Oliver made some pretty lovely sounds. Thanks also to our honorary adventurer Catherine for coming along to visit and taking some pictures.

 

Hungry Families

There was a family workshop day at Glenbrae for week 4. The parents were coming in for short aerobics sessions, a story session with me and then a healthy snack of fruit and veg.

I decided to try turning ‘The Very Hungry Caterpiller’ into a 20 minute Story Session. We used roughly the same structure for all 4 sessions for the 2 different age groups and this was the first time I really felt like I managed to engage the 2-3s in an experience directly connected with the book. In the Butterfly Room it was great to meet some of the parents and get an opportunity to get them to wear adventurers bobble hats.It was good to be working with a book that so many of the children and parents were familiar with.

Because we had such short time with the groups this session felt slightly more like a performance, though we still had enough time to get the children involved with the storytelling. One of our most useful props this week was the Green Sleeping bag. If you put Hannah the adventurer inside, use a ‘Time Crank‘ to pass two weeks of time she will change from a Fat Caterpiller (or Faterpiller, as suggested by one of the Children) into a beautiful butterfly.

Another Adventurer

For week 3 I was joined by Hannah the Adventurer. Hannah is doing a placement with Starcatchers through Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Hannah will be assisting me through the Story Pages project and is keeping her own blog of her placement HERE.

This week was midterm at Glenbrae. This meant that the Butterfly Room (3-5s) were on holiday but there were a few young people who attend the out of school club (5-12s) in the centre this week. To ingratiate ourselves with these young people, us adventurers got involved.I lost a game of table football and a game of pool while Hannah was being beaten at Mario Kart on the Wii, it’s a hard life as an adventurer.

Our book this week was ‘Press Here’ by Herve Tullet . I’d chosen this book knowing I was focusing on the 2-3s. The book starts with a yellow spot and gives instruction to “press here”, on the next page there are 2 yellow spots and further instructions throughout the book.I was pleased to see how well this book worked with the older children, it gave Hannah and I a chance to sit individually with young people and go through the book with them. One boy even asked “is this book magic?”.

With the 2-3s we had the book at the ready but also had materials to allow the children to make their own versions.It was great to have some of the Children from the Sunshine room engaging directly with the book and I was really impressed when Max decided he was going to copy it.