Our Love of a Good Story

Our love of a good story . . .

     There's nothing better than a good story.  Ask any Kitah Gimmel child.  The children listen attentively to stories at Circle.  At snack and lunch, they munch and nibble on their food for a few minutes and then call out, "Morah, read us a story!"

     But we don't always need a book to tell a story.  We used picture icons, much like a rebus, to tell a traditional Tu B'Shvat story during Circle Time.  (The story is pictured on the whiteboard, above, with Rami.  Below, Shlomit and Reed review the story.)  We "read" the story left to right, each "sentence" was written on one line.  The first line says, "Once upon a time, there was an old man in Israel who planted a tree."  We "read" the story several times--it was fun!)

 

     We retell stories using pictures and puppets.  Below, Hannah, Ari S, Ari E., Mortimer, Henia, Pearl, and Leiba sequence the events from the book The Mitten.  (Today, Monday, we used an actual mitten with an assortment of three-dimensional plastic animals to change-out the story-line.  We added hippos, lizards, a praying mantis, one cockroach, and a horse to the traditional plot.  The children chose their own animals.)

     Sometimes, children have their very own stories.  Below, the children "baked" a birthday cake and placed it in the oven.  It was part of their dramatic play during morning arrival time.  Whose birthday was it?  The Morahs never did find out. The children didn't feel a need to fill us in:  they had their own story to act out, while singing Happy Birthday and baking.  They didn't need our assistance to tell a good story.

     Morning Arrival time is a good time to get a story going in the Sensory Table, too.  Below, Ari S. tells a Morah about cars getting stuck in a blizzard. He told us about a house about to fall off a cliff, too.  He knew about a blizzard from the news, and took this opportunity to tell the Morahs, while using the cars to demonstrate.

     (Below, Morah Yael reads, "Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type" while holding a cow puppet.  Snack-time is a great time to be entertained by a story!)

       

Keep on Telling Stories!

Morah Susan, Morah Yael and all the story-lovers in Kitah Gimmel