Phonics Storytelling Workshops

We have recently started our Phonics Storytelling Workshops. I never learnt phonics in school. I learnt the letters as A, B and C, and then I learnt spellings and therefore learnt to read. I became aware of phonics when my daughter started going to school. I did my little research on the Internet, and was amazed with what I learnt!

Phonics refers to the sounds that the English alphabets make. The words we read are made up of small sound segments, 44 in all. If children learn these 44 sounds, then they can connect the sounds to the letters they read, and will thus be able to pronounce a word. Likewise, if they hear a word, they can break it into sound segments and can tell how it is spelt. So, in short, phonics is about learning the 44 sounds.

At The Story Place, we teach the 44 sounds through stories. Each letter represents a character, who has his/her own personality, and each personality makes a unique sound and has a unique shape.

When children sit for our storytelling sessions, they don’t look at alphabets, they look at characters. They listen to a story about the character, and listen to songs about the sound the character makes and how the character gets its shape.

Later, when they see a letter, they relate the letter to its character, and then they recall the sound it makes! Doesn’t that sound like a fun way to learn the English alphabets?

If you are interested in learning about phonics or if you’d like to become a phonics trainer or if you’d like your child to attend our storytelling sessions, then write to us at thestoryplacefolks@gmail.com or visit our Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/thestoryplace) for more details.

What Next?

We've had a wonderful summer!

Our Geography themed story session - Around the World in 7 Stories has had a fabulous response and has been a resounding success across bookstores in Mumbai. Our eager participants and their parents have been asking us "What Next?"

Well, as the next step, we plan to setup "The Story Place Nook" in Mumbai city. At our Nook, we will tell stories and continue taking children into the enchanting world of stories. And through those stories we'll teach them a little bit of Math, Science, History and Geography. It's going to be a lot of fun and exploration combined with some bits of hands-on activities and experiments.

Do let us know what you think about our plan, and if you would like your kids to become members of our Nook.

Your feedback and thoughts are very valuable to us, and will help us move our little dream to the next phase. So please do spare a minute and write your thoughts in the comment box, and of course please pass the word around :-)

Thanking you in advance.

The Story Place Team

Our Story Recipe

Many people have been asking us where we get our stories from. Well, some of our stories are originals from books, but we don't literally read the story from the book. We retell the story in our own words; we add extra bits of information or twists and turns to enable children participation in the story. We also remix and retell stories, this would mean that we combine two short stories together and retell it as one new story. And then there are some stories that we create on our own.

Through each of our story, we teach some concepts to children. Hence, the story is never told as is. We split the story into many parts, then we add bits of learning concepts into it and finally we weave it all together. What you get at the end is a new, interactive and engaging version of an old story!

Stories are often set in real or imaginary worlds. They have characters, a theme, a plot, action, adventure and drama. So in one way, the stage, the script and the acts are already defined for us. All we do is figure out what "learning concept" can be built into the story. For example, through our story (this one's our creation) "Adventures of Johnny Dragon", we take children on an Asian tour. Along with Johnny Dragon, we visit Japan, China, Sri Lanka and a few other countries.

Through Johnny Dragon's adventure we learnt facts about volcanoes in Japan; we also found out the length of the Great Wall of China and learnt about some Chinese inventions. The children participate in the story too. They read the clues and guess which country Johnny visits next. They also share their knowledge about each country and decide how Johnny should travel from one destination to another. Children by nature are very creative; they provide their ideas and thoughts and make Johnny's adventure even more interesting.

At the end, each storytelling session becomes an amazing learning experience - for us and for the children. So, if you'd like your children to be part of a creative storytelling session, then check out our schedule and do come visit us. Because, we'd love to build a new story along with you!

Three Stories, Three Continents and a Whole Lot of Fun

We've completed three out of seven stories from our series "Around the World in 7 Stories". We conceived the theme purely out of our lack of interest in Geography. We realized that if we were to create a story series around Geography, it would mean that we read through the subject force ourselves to think of how it can be put forth in an interesting manner to children. Today, three stories later, we are quite happy with our work, and so are the children.

We've completed three continents so far - North America, Asia and Africa. We began our preparations by creating a plan for all seven continents. In the plan we decided what aspect of Geography we should cover. We decided to stick to providing basic facts about each continent - number of countries, landmarks, languages and unique facts.

The next step was to find interesting stories. We spent many week reading as many as stories as we could. And then the stories were remixed and tailored into our version so that they could revolve around a continent. It wasn't easy in the beginning, but slowly we got the hang of it.

We decided to use the laptop (technology) as a supporting tool during our storytelling sessions. The laptop is used to show pictures of continent and countries, and is not used to display a slide show of the images from the story, because we want to leave the "imagination" part to the children.

Children who have attended the three stories know the location of all seven continents. They know names of animals that are unique to North America, they followed a trail in Asia and learnt about volcanoes of Japan, inventions from China and facts about Sri Lanka and Israel, and finally they know about the unique creatures living in the Madagascar Island of Africa and the number of languages people speak in Africa. And all this they learnt through a story!

It has been a fun experience so far, and we our now busy working on the stories for the remaining four continents.

So if you'd like your kids to learn some unique facts about continents, or if you'd like to revise your Geography knowledge, then come attend our storytelling sessions. We'd love to travel the world with you!

Check our our storytelling schedule @ http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.301978406550596.71051.238449639570140&type=3

What We Learnt from The Three Little Pigs

Last Sunday, I read the classic story "The Three Little Pigs" to my 3-year old. After we read the story, she pretended to be the big bad wolf, and went around huffing and puffing trying to blow down things. 

Watching her do that gave me an idea to extend the story into a little playtime activity. We made clay figures for the three pigs. Then, we decided to build a house for each of them. We looked around the house for material that could be used to build the houses. We zeroed down on three items - Popsicle stick house, Lego block house and a Straw (drinking straw) house.

We spent a few hours building each house and then placed the pigs inside it. Then, the little one pretended to be the big bad wolf, and huffed and puffed, and tried to blow down each house. Needless to say, the Straw house was the easiest to fall followed by the Popsicle stick house. And, the Lego block house stayed put.

The story and activity were a fantastic way to spend the Sunday afternoon. And the little one learnt some basic fundamentals of construction. Our next step will be to figure out how we can make the Popsicle and Straw houses stronger, maybe use a combination of building material.

There's no limit to how we can use a story to teach concepts. The Three Little Pigs story can also be used to teach about weather. For older children, it can be extended to learn about why people in different parts of the world construct houses differently. It could also lend itself to a math activity, where you determine the amount of sticks or blocks needed to construct a small or big house.

So, the next time you want to teach your child some concepts, read them a story and extend it into an activity. They will enjoy their reading and activity time and will also learn concepts incidentally.

Around the World in 7 Stories

We've been busy preparing for our summer storytelling sessions - Around the World in 7 Stories, and hence we haven't been able to post any blogs in the past few weeks.

It has been a fun experience preparing for the storytelling sessions, and we have also managed to update our own geography knowledge :).

The storytelling sessions start from 18th April 2012.

We'll begin each storytelling session with a song about the 7 continents. Then, we'll pick one continent and walk children through the famous places in it. Through our visual-walk, we'll tell them some amazing facts about the continent and give some information about the land forms and wildlife in the continent. We'll then lead them into an enchanting story from the continent.

At the end of the session, the children will do a craft activity and make a souvenir related to the story or the continent.

Did we mention, we are giving away passports to the children too? Each time they visit a continent, they get a stamp in their passport.

So, if you'd like your children to take a trip around the world, come visit us at the Landmark Book Stores in Mumbai.

• Every Wednesday, 4pm-5pm at Landmark Book Store, Inorbit Mall, Vashi
• Every Thursday, 4pm-5pm at Landmark Book Store, Infiniti Mall, Andheri (W)

We hope to see you there!

Mythological Tales with a Twist

We have all grown up listening to mythological stories and watching episodes and these day cartoon shows about them. So one is never too inclined to pick up a mythological story book. But, what if there was a book that created new funny short stories from the large epic, and the short stories bound back to the epic in some way. Wouldn't that be interesting?

I found one such book yesterday - Tail Tales (Volume 1) by Hema Vaidyanathan. It's a small story book with beautiful illustrations. Through the book, Hema tells us two short stories, and each is derived from the mythological epic, Ramayana. 

At first glance, I was skeptical about the book, because I assumed it would be another retell of the Ramayana story. But I was quite surprised when I flipped through the pages. Hema has beautifully taken characters out of the Ramayana and built stories around them. And the stories link back to the roles the characters played in the Ramayana. After I read both stories, my verdict was "simply fantastic!”

I read the book to my three-year old and she enjoyed the story and loved the beautiful illustrations. When she grows up and hears/reads the story of the Ramayana, she'll be able to understand how certain characters in the epic got their powers.

If you'd like to revisit epic stories and see them through a new perspective, check out http://www.ammastales.com/the-books.html.