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.

Lost and Found

With my rucksack full of bobble hats and a mini suitcase in the shape of a penguin I headed to Glenbrae for another adventure.Having struggled to find a way to engage the Sunshine Room (2-3s) with the book the first week I decided i would try setting up a space which they could choose to enter or not. I had a few visitors in my den who listened to a bit of this weeks story ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers.

I love this book (and all his books) and really enjoyed finding ways of playing with the story. When I headed to the Butterfly Room (3-5s) we donned our Adventurers Hats and really explored the story.We practiced our penguin walk, found our very own lost penguin, built a boat to sail to the South Pole and made posters for and named the missing penguin we found.I’m learning a lot about the difference between 2-3 year olds and 3-5 year olds and enjoying getting to know the children at the centre.

I taught the Butterfly Room ’40 years on an Iceberg’ a song about a polar bear which ended in all of the children hugging staff member Marie.

As I left Glenbrae this week Ben turned to me and said:

“Bye, Geraldine the Adventurer”

I grinned from ear to ear and called back:

“Bye, Ben the Adventurer”

His smile matched mine.

Our First Adventure

Our first adventure ‘Augustus and His Smile’ a book about a tiger that has lost his smile by Catherine Rayner.

The illustrations in the book are beautiful and the simple story has lots of opportunity for questions and play with the children.

We practiced tiger roars, found some exotic beetles, listened to some noisy birds and eventually found lots of smiles.

 

Opening the Book…

The week before I started the Story Pages sessions I went for a visit to the Glenbrae Children’s Centre, to see the space and meet some of the staff and children.

After spending an afternoon chatting with Moira Gray, The Head Teacher, and being shown round the centre I was excited and slightly intimidated about starting the project. Glenbrae is such an excellent place I felt it was important that what I was bringing was something different for the staff and children. 

The staff of Glenbrae are enthusiastic, supportive and agreed they were happy to wear silly costumes and take part in what I was going to try out.

So I decided I was going to be “Geraldine the Adventurer” when I arrived at Glenbrae Children’s Centre a week later and that we would all go on an adventure together.

 “Is anyone up for helping me make 40 bobble hats?”

Welcome to Story Pages

Story Pages will explore how to use Books as a starting point for guided

interactive play with under 5s. Books provide a familiar access point for children, parents and staff. I will be working at Glenbrae Children’s Centre in Greenock for 10 weeks. I will use a new story book each week and hope to work with a some musicians and visual artists as the project develops.