The story makers

In July I posted Traditional Celtic Story Tellers. Story telling or story making is what life and communication has centred round since people first began dwelling in caves.

Some years ago when living in India I used to entertain my young boys by going to the BBC website CBeebies and we would pass many an enjoyable hour playing games, making stories and singing songs. We lived in India for six years before coming to Indonesia and so many of our stories centred around tigers, elephants and Mahouts. I tried to take the story making further, by taking the story outside to a local forest on a dry dusty hill. I called my walking stick of staff, the Tiger stick and we would go to the local forest and hunt imaginary tigers. My boys frequently remind me of those fun days tiger hunting in Delhi.

In the age of computers, playstations, PSP etc, we are losing the art of story making or story telling and I make it a point to tell at least two stories every night before the boys go to sleep. Tonight I told one about a human butterfly..

I recommend if you want to become a better teller of tales go to The Story Makers at BBC's CBeebies

'Imagine, imagine, imagine a story!' chant the characters in this programme.

The Story Makers
The scene is set in a library where, after it closes at midnight, the magical Wordsworth family and puppets, Jelly and Jackson, pour objects and ideas into a story-making machine. This machine always needs the magical ingredient, and this is - imagination! Three exciting stories emerge as filmed insert, a puppet story and an animation. Children are drawn into the exciting stories. The technological world in which we now live doesn't always offer children scope to be imaginative. More than ever, they need opportunities to be creative, to imagine, to dream, to stop and wonder and explore and to develop a sense of awe and wonder of the world. These skills are essential if effective learning is to take place.

The programme has the potential to develop a love of books. Parents/carers can extend the programme content by further developing a love of the written word. Parents/carers might like to take children to their local library, look at books and magazines together or invent their own lively stories-perhaps during a long car journey. Playing with words can promote an enjoyment of language and can be a springboard to future success in learning.

Happy story making and in next posting, I would love to tell you our favourite story, written in Bangladesh called Bhombal Dass..

Bob