Hello Forest Friends!
Be sure to mark your calendars for Thursday 4pm, we have another Forest Friends Zoom!
Teacher Madeleine here! Today I have a video of Lulu and I reading a story we made together called “Toto and Dorothy.”
We’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks during rest (free on audible right now–I recommend Bill Nighy reading the Wizard of Oz, we’ve also been enjoying Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland).
For this activity, I made a book for Lulu by folding and stapling paper, and asked her to choose a story to dictate to me and then illustrate. You can think of familiar stories together–are there fairytales you know well? Folk tales? Family stories? Juneberry resters read lots of fairytales with me before rest–do they remember what happens in classics like Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Jack and the Beanstalk, or Pinnochio?
Retelling a story in your own words can be really good for processing and solidifying understanding! This was such an interesting exercise to see what parts of the story resonated or were confusing for Lulu and talk about them. It’s also a great opportunity to change details about stories to make them more personal or empowering, or less scary. I loved the nostalgia of reading fairytales but some of the morals didn’t sit well with me and would edit as I read–so here’s an opportunity to make them better.
Guiding Questions:
Who is this story about? Where are they? What do they want or need to happen? Who helps or bothers them? What’s the most exciting or surprising thing that happens to them? Who do they want to help or take care of? Are they happy and proud at the end of the story? Is what happens to them/what they do fair?
Hope you have fun story telling!
–Madeleine
