Spin the Yarn

I recently completed my third storytelling experience, which involved the use of props and/or manipulatives, and I would like to take this time to reflect on that experience from beginning to end. Below, you will find my recording of that experience. The first thing that I had to do to complete this experience was to figure out what story I would be telling and what kinds of props and manipulatives I would use. When thinking of which story to use, the story There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly! , was one that immediately came to mind. The printing of the story that I used was by Lucille Colandro with illustrations by Jared Lee. I remember being read that story in elementary school and enjoying it. The old lady’s strange behavior that is both mysterious and gross, appealed to me as a child. I looked at a copy of the book on the website Open Library, and I thought that it would work well for my first experience telling a story with props because the story is told from one point of v

  Chapter 10 of Ellin Greene and Janice M. Del Negro’s (2010) Storytelling: Art and Technique , titled “Children and Young Adults as Storytellers,” featured many different programs that taught storytelling to children and young adults. In the section about Anne Shimojima’s storytelling activities, one of the activities that stood out to me was when Shimojima would take several different folktales, rewrite them, and have the children make their own additions to the story (p. 195). In chapter 4, folktales are described as traditional tales that, “have the essentials of a good short story: terseness, simplicity, and vigor” (p. 65). These traits are what make them good for beginner storytellers to learn, but I think that by allowing children to personalize them, it can create a greater connection between the child and the story they are telling because they have been allowed to add something of themselves to the story. Anne Shimojima has been a storyteller for a long time and she has sever