It’s 3:07 – twenty-three minutes to the end of the school day. Children fidget in their seats. Thy whisper and rustle their papers. One boy tosses a pencil over and over in the air. About 2 times out of three, it clatters to the ground and he scurries under his desk to retrieve it. A little girl taps her fingernails in a monotonous rhythm on her chair. Tennis shoes squeak against the linoleum floor. Several children need to sharpen their pencils, get a drink of water, and go to the bathroom all at once.
“Just twenty more minutes,” the teacher tells herself, taking a deep breath. Names go on the board. The children who are misbehaving will have to sit out for five, ten, fifteen minutes at recess the next day. Countless research articles support the need for play in a child’s day. Few would disagree. We mourn the disappearance of recess, the diminishment of physical education, the piles of homework that keep children indoors for a large portion of their after school time. The demands of standardized testing have put children in this situation.
Teachers are as probably more aware than anyone that activity should not be a luxury in school, yet they are tied by the demands of the curriculum. And don’t find much time in a very busy day to incorporate movement.
The StoryCrafters method is a simple, inexpensive, and time-efficient way to help children learn through whole body integration – it tickles the senses and stimulates those parts of the brain that otherwise may not get enough attention during the day.
StoryCrafters is primarily a storytelling technique, and so lends itself most obviously to language learning, but careful choice of stories will allow a teacher, librarian or storyteller to incorporate social studies, geography, history, even math and science into storytime.
What is required for success in StoryCrafters is simple craft materials (clay, ribbons, buttons, pipecleaners), a classroom of children willing to play, and a storyteller willing to be a little bit silly. Small risk, great reward.
Click here to find out how to become a StoryCrafters storyteller!
