As part of their Black History Month celebrations, I was asked to do storytelling at Stamford Hill school. I entertained Year 1 and Reception with Anansi and the talking Melon and how Anansi got his stories.
The children’s attention was immediately captured when I showed them my huge wooden boat. I explained that we sere sailing to West Africa for our stories on Story Boat. This sparked stories about pirates, boats and where they are all from. A few children who were from Ghana and Nigeria, were really happy to tell share what they knew about West Africa.
We used lots of animal masks, a portrait of Anancy the spider man, a rain-maker and my jam music player with atmospheric forest sounds. Year 1 were very lively and everyone wanted a role to play in my stories.
As there were 30 children in the class I had to think of every possible way that I could get the children involved. I wrote the titles of the stories I was planning to tell, on to several small scrolls of paper. These were then hidden on my huge Boat and I allowed children to take turns in choosing a scroll, thereby choosing the next story to be told. It worked a treat.