We’ve been busy at Storycraft Publishing resolving some issues and working on our new downloadable KidTellers booklets, so I haven’t posted in awhile. But it was brought to my attention that one of my books, Storytelling Adventures: Stories Kids Can Tell, was recommended in the spring issue of Scholastic Instructor magazine in an article discussing using props to help young storytellers. Some people have wondered how I got started using props with young tellers, and some of my experiences with it. So, here’s a little behind-the-scenes peek.
The Story Behind
The Leprechaun’s Magic Box
Sometimes telling a story with a prop, even a very small one, gives you the self confidence that you need for a good performance. It helps you to get in the spirit of your story.
A prop can be a craft you make, a puppet, or some other item you are talking about in your story. If your story is about football, hold a football in your hand. If your story is about a model rocket, hold one while you tell the tale.
As an example I created the story “The Secret of the Leprechaun’s Magic Box” to be told with a one-inch paper cube, the tiniest prop I could imagine. Holding one of the cubes in my hand, I told the story for the first time to a room full of professional storytellers. The magic worked.
Over the years, since the story was published in Storytelling Adventures: Stories Kids Can Tell, I’ve told the story many times in elementary and junior high classrooms, teacher workshops, and storytelling conferences. Once while telling the tale in an elementary classroom, the teacher told me that another class was creating similar boxes in a geometry class. I visited that class, told the story, and taught the students how to fill each box with something magic, something like love, courage, or responsibility.
One of the latest times I’ve told that story I asked the kids in the audience to help tell it by reciting the magic words when we came to that part of the tale. There are three places in the story where I usually recite the words, but the kids were having so much fun with their magic words, that I added a few more times. As I was leaving the school that day, the kids were being dismissed at the same time. As my storytelling helpers passed me in the hall they chanted the magic words one more time, “I can do that! I know I can! That’s easy!” and they waved their magic boxes.
“Real magic,” the leprechaun told the hero in the story, “is more powerful than any hocus-pocus pretend magic.”
The props kids use to help them tell stories are the magic that turn shy children and even the class clown into successful storytellers.
