Storytelling With Instruments Part II

Rhythm Sticks Make A Colorful Campfire

It's very fun to have the children sit around a pretend campfire when there is a story being told.  I usually wait until the last ten minutes of class and then we make a sitting circle around a pile of red rhythm sticks, maracas, tone blocks, or whatever you have handy. (a small parachute even works!)

The story of the day may be a friendly ghost story, a story about an animal or child but whatever it is, I make sure and have appropriate sound effects instruments incorporated into the script.  As I mentioned in the other storytelling post, I'll use a maraca for a rattlesnake, a tone block for a horse galloping, a cowbell to signify the cows in a pasture, etcetera.  If there is a rainstorm, I ask the children to help me with the sounds of gentle rain, thunder, lightning, and then making a large circle with their arms over their heads to indicate that the sun has come back out. 

Another popular story has been a story about courtesy and manners and the children love to help me out by saying "please" and "thank you" on cue during the story.

Another option would be singing together around the campfire.  We've had a lot of fun singing camp songs like "On Top Of Spaghetti".

The learning points in this exercise are listening, focus, singing/reciting together, and enjoying the age old entertainment of story telling.