Homeschool Tips Tricks Ideas

Dear StoryTelling friend,

Teachers, librarians, parents, caregivers all ask me, “How do I tell stories for children?” No matter your goal: stories for the classroom, bedtime stories, storytelling in libraries, a story for homeschool, stories for parents to tell their children, here are 6 tips for telling stories to children:

1. Be prepared for anything.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give you about storytelling for children is: expect the unexpected.

You have to be prepared with a variety of stories when working with children. Once, I was booked to tell stories to a group of children at a local library. I was told to expect kids of roughly ages 6-8. When the audience started to arrive at the library, they were not the older children I was expecting but rather just-beyond-toilet-trained toddlers, who had much of their focus spent on their “big boy pants” (the pull-up pants that are a version of very absorbent underpants) and the very exciting Velcro(tm) strips on their shoes. All of my prepared stories were geared for the listening and participative skills of a much older audience. So, I had to dig deep into my repertoire of stories and games to entertain this very young crowd. We had a good time but it was the long 25 minutes of improvising!

2. Pay close attention to your audience.

You will remember that in previous lessons I talked about storytelling being an audience-centered art form. The younger your audience, the more you as the storyteller must be carefully aware of how your audience is reacting. Children wear their emotions and feelings on their bodies. If a story is not keeping their attention, you will soon know it. Then quickly finish it up and move on to the next story on your list.

3. Focus on having a variety of stories and presentations for those stories.

For older audiences, you may often have a “set list” of stories you will tell. For your audience of children, it is better to have a “pile” of stories to tell with a variety of lengths and participation levels. Generally, for these young ears and eyes, a series of quick and fun stories is a good choice, with a few slow-down stories at the ready if they seem to have a need to listen more carefully.

4. Do not surprise your sponsors.

Every community has a different sense of what is and is not appropriate content in storytelling for children. Be sure that you and the sponsor are clear on what the sponsor expects for your presentation for children. For example, there is a huge difference from one group to another as to what does and does not make a good “scary” story for during the Halloween season.

5. Look children in the eye.

Don’t forget all the basics of storytelling that I have been teaching you. Especially, remember to look carefully at the children you are telling to at your performances. Those lingering looks into the eyes of children in the audience are powerful moments for them.

6. Be uninhibited in your telling.

I believe that children “see” stories differently than adults do. They can submerge themselves very deeply in the stories, often thinking that even the most fanciful story is real. Have fun! Act silly. Make faces. Sing. Wiggle. Be goofy and be larger than life. Your audience will stay with you and immerse themselves in your telling. By the way, expecting children to “sit quietly” as they politely listen to you tell profound stories is to invite your own disappointment.

Storytelling for children can be great fun and may be just a bit more challenging than you expect. No matter your ultimate goal in storytelling, try to include an audience of children on a regular basis.

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Sean Buvala is the director of Storyteller.net and the author of the Ebook “DaddyTeller”™ Ebook that teaches Dads to tell bedtime stories (or anytime stories) to their children. You can find him on Twitter @daddyteller.http://www.daddyteller.com
This article first appeared on www.tellingstoriesforchildren.com.

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Pour and Measure
by Michelle B.

When my second daughter was a preschooler between the ages of two to four one of her favorite activities was measuring and pouring. She used my measuring cups and spoons so often I could never find them when I needed them!  And she would pour everything possible, with of course the accompanying mess. I finally wised up and gave her a measuring set for her birthday. The first thing I bought was a new cat litter pan to hold the mess in. I had looked at a dishpan first, but it was too small. The litter pan was a good, working size. A trip to the discount store provided me with plastic measuring cups and spoons, a one-cup and a two-cup liquid measuring cups, a set of funnels, a turkey baster, a pitcher, a ladle, a set of plastic juice cups, plastic mixing bowls and a set of mixing spoons thrown in. Everything fit inside the litter pan.

All that was needed was the stuff to pour and stir! A zipper bag full of pinto beans and another of rice fit the bill nicely.

My daughter was delighted with her gift. We would take the set (minus the rice and beans) out to her wading pool which had a few inches of water in it, and we would measure and pour and stir and pretend and learn all afternoon. I would shake a few drops of food color in her pitcher and another color in a gallon water jug, and my daughter would have a great time measuring and mixing her secret potions. Sometimes she and her older sister would take the set out to the sandbox and pretend they were cooking, concentrating on the “correct” measuring to make the goodies turn out just right. The bathtub also made a great measuring playground.

When it was too hot to play outside (we live in the Arizona desert!) I would pull out the beans and rice and let my daughter experiment away on the kitchen floor. She would measure a cup of beans and then try to match that with the rice, concentrating on filling the cups and pouring carefully. Or she would see how many ¼ cups of rice it would take to make one cup. The pan kept the escaping beans to a minimum.

All this play introduced her to and helped her gain inquiry learning skills and concepts in measuring, estimating, eye-hand coordination, concentration, problem-solving, counting, one-to-one correspondence, fractions, creativity, fine-and gross-motor control and mathematical thinking. Her curiosity gave her many questions to investigate and answer. And she transferred her new pouring skills to helping me cook dinner!

Young children learn as readily as they eat and sleep, as it is a natural part of their being. No one needs to tell them, “It’s time to learn now.”  Watch your little ones and notice that nearly all of their play automatically involves learning. The measuring set served as a tool for my daughter to use to expand her understanding of her world and gain important learning skills.

***
Michelle B. is a full-time homeschooling mom and has been so for more than 18 years. She has a degree in Elementary Education. Follow us at Twitter @homeschoolart.

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Learning Math in a Home School Garden
by Michelle B.


Tending a garden bed presents homeschoolers the easy opportunity to work on many foundational math and science skills with your preschooler or kindergartener, without needing to do any lesson-planning. Number conservation, patterns and ordinal numbers are three of the early skills easily incorporated in your garden time. In a previous article I wrote about classification, shape-recognition and one-to-one correspondence.

Ask your little one to be your helper and include him in the planting process. Take advantage of his interest, and let him go play when his attention shifts. Much learning occurs through discussion. Talk about everything you are doing in the garden, and listen to your child’s input.

Number conservation

Let’s say you wish to plant ten squash plants. Hand your child the ten seeds, and have her line them up on the table as she counts them. Then spread out the line and ask her how many seeds there are. Push them into a pile and ask the same question. Poke ten holes in the soil for those seeds and ask your child to lay one seed in each hole. How many seeds now? If she doesn’t know, how can she find out?

Patterns

Perhaps you will lay out the flowers in a pattern. “We have three colors of snapdragons. First we plant a red snapdragon, yellow is second, and third is a pink one. What comes next?” Or the garden care schedule: “Every morning we water ( B000A0IBY2 ) the seedlings, then pull the weeds, and last sweep the pathways. So tomorrow morning, what do we start with?” Notice the patterns of fence post and pickets in the garden fence, or the arrangement of pavers in the path. You can find patterns in flowers and in the leaves on the stems.

Ordinal numbers

Use the words first, second and third, and more if needed, to describe everything that happens in your garden. . “First we plan the garden, second we buy the seeds, and third we plant them.” “First we plant the sunflowers, the zinnias are second and the marigolds are third.” You can use ordinal numbers to describe plant growth, the passing of seasons, or the transformation of caterpillar to butterfly. (See also Patterns.)

You will notice how each of these garden activities uses foundational skills that overlap and mix with each other. As you are talking with your child while you work in your garden, you will find many occasions to reinforce these much-needed pre-math and science skills. Check this article for more math skills that overlap with these. Happy Planting!

***
Michelle B. is a full-time homeschooling mom of four who has been teaching from home for 18 years. She holds a degree in elementary education.

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Early Match Concepts
by Michelle B.

How to teach homeschool math?

Nearly everything we do in an average day involves math in one form or another, and it is easy to include our homeschool children in many of the activities. When thinking about homeschool math planning, it is helpful to know (and good for our budget!) that learning many early math concepts in the preschool homeschool requires no textbooks, workbooks or special equipment. Included here are a few of the basic concepts for our children to understand and simple learning activities for each one.

*Same and different. By offering choices to your child you can help him learn to recognize different traits in objects. “Would you like a green grape or a red one? Do you want to play with the big blocks or the little ones? Do you want to slide down the long bumpy slide or the short curvy one?”

Lay out four items in a row, three the same and one that is very different. For example, three spoons and one drinking cup, or three stuffed kittens and a teddy bear. Ask which one is different from the others. When your child can easily pick out the odd item, lay out four more objects but with only one different trait, such as three blue buttons and one yellow button, or three teaspoons and a tablespoon. “Same and different” is the precursor to sorting.


*Sorting: When your child understands the concept of “same and different” he will be able to easily begin sorting. Sorting requires a child to identify certain attributes in an object, such as color, size, item usage, etc., and then form a group of objects according to those traits. As adults, we do sorting every day: putting away freshly-washed laundry, the groceries on shopping day, and the dishes from the dishwasher. Separating the sales ads, junk mail, and personal mail. Organizing our collections. Determining which books to turn in on library day and which to keep at home. Involve your young child in some of the sorting that regularly happens in your house: give him the pile of socks to pair up while you are folding clothes. Have her determine which foods go in the pantry, the freezer or the cupboard. Let him put away the silverware. As you determine the usage of the day’s mail, hand the mail one at a time to your young sorter and let her place each piece in the appropriate pile or basket. At play time, sit with your child and ask him to corral the plastic animals into their families, drive the cars into the correct garage, separate the dinosaurs into meat-eaters and plant-eaters, or collect the play food into main dish or dessert piles.

*Patterns: Patterns are all around us: in music, art, building designs, nature. This concept is also related to “same and different” and “sorting.” You can use toy race cars, building blocks, pencils, coins, buttons, beads, candies, etc. to create patterns. Line up a pattern using two attributes: red car, green car, red car, green car. What car comes next? When your child can easily copy your simple pattern and extend it correctly, then add a third attribute. Red car, geen car, yellow car. Keep building the base pattern when your child has mastered the previous one. Have your child make a pattern for you to follow. As you extend your child’s pattern, speak out loud for your child to hear how you solve the problem. For example, “Okay, I see first a dime, next a nickel, then a penny. Since the first coin is a dime, I will place a dime next in the pattern.”

You can draw base patterns on paper with markers or crayons and have your child extend it. This would provide a boredom-buster in waiting rooms or at the restaurant table.

What patterns do you find around you? Cars in a parking lot, flowers in a garden, silverware on the table, products on a store shelf; on giftwrap, fabric, scrapbook paper, wallpaper. “I see a red rose and then a yellow rose. If we continue this pattern, what rose would be next?” “Do you see the pattern your feet make on the sidewalk when you walk through a puddle?”

Same and different, sorting and patterns are a few of the many easy-to-apply early math concepts for our young homeschool children.

***
The Author, Michelle B., is a full-time homeschooling mother of four who, as of this writing, has been homeschooling for 18 years. She is a former elementary school teacher in the private-school system

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Tips for Telling Funny-Scary Campfire Stories
by Priscilla Howe

Night has fallen. The campfire flickers and pops, coals glow, listeners creep closer to the fire and the storyteller. It’s time for scary stories. But wait…some of the listeners are too small for the stories of La Llorona or Hookman. It’s time for a funny-scary campfire story, just enough for shivers, not enough for nightmares. Here are a few tips for effective campfire storytelling for the youngest listeners.

1. Notice the body language of the listeners as you introduce the story. Suggest that the smallest children sit with an older sibling or adult. Some small children like very scary stories, but it’s kinder to the adults who have to be with the child later on to tell gentler stories to young children.

2. Let the listeners know right away that this will be a funny-scary story, not a scary-scary story.

3. Choose a story with a joke ending. You can find a few of these in Alvin Schwartz’ “Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark” series, in Simon Bronner’s “American Children’s Folklore”, or ask a ten-year-old who has been to camp.

4. Err on the side of goofy characters, not scary, for young listeners. Build in a hand movement or repetitive phrase so the audience can join in.

5. Sometimes even a funny story can scare a small child. Reassure the individual child that it will all be fine in the end.

6. For a little shiver, pause just before the punchline. This builds suspense and creates an even bigger laugh at the funny ending.

7. Don’t be surprised if children say “That wasn’t scary!” at the end. This is most likely not a true critique, just an observation.

Once the little ones have gone off to bed, and you’re sure that those who are still around the fire can handle it, if you have time and inclination, tell the truly scary stories.

******
As a full-time professional storyteller, Priscilla Howe tells all kinds of stories: funny, scary, funny-scary, and more. With some 200+ peformances per year all over the world, she’s an expert in storytelling for children. Check out her stories, including The Ghost with the One Black Eye at http://priscillahowe.com .

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by Michelle B.

Reading is probably the most important academic skill to teach our homeschool children. Once they have the ability to read and understand what they are reading, they will be able to use that skill not just to complete assignments but to explore the world through print, satisfy their curiosity and expand upon their learning.

How do I begin to teach my preschool or kindergarten child the importance of reading?

Here are a few homeschool reading tips to help encourage our students to embrace the skill of reading, regardless of the style of homeschooling one chooses. Begin with these well before your kids can read, and make them a part of your regular routine.

*To understand the value of reading our children need to see the important people in their lives using the tool of reading on a regular basis. Do your kids see you read? We have many opportunities to read each day: recipes for dinner, shopping lists, weather and news reports in the paper or online, email, game instructions, newsletters, appliance manuals, posters, street signs, even the cereal box! Read for pleasure, such as the comics, a novel or book of short stories, blogs, websites, poetry. The more your child sees you in the act of reading, whether you are reading aloud or to yourself, the more the act of reading becomes an expected part of life.

*Print should be readily available for the kids to see and touch and explore. Children’s picture books, books with only print, magazines, newspapers, how-to books, ABC books, computer print-outs, coffee-table books, workbooks, textbooks, letters, notes, signs, lists of words, etc. Try hanging a small dry-erase board at child level, maybe on their bedroom door, and write a new note everyday. You can write the names of items in your family room or schoolroom on index cards and attach them to the respective piece, such as “chair,” “computer,” or “cabinet.” Print a short note or a joke on a piece of paper and leave it at their lunch or dinner plate. Find a real mailbox or make one and take turns leaving letters or notes to each other. Let your kids play a computer game that involves some reading.

*Writing materials should also be available. Set up a writing space for your family that your homeschool students can use whenever they would like to. It can be a corner of the room with a small table or a desk, a reading lamp, shelves of various papers and notepads, a box holding markers, pens and pencils, even a typewriter. Or simply fill a basket with notepads and pens that can be carried to the desired space. Keep refilling the supplies with whatever you find, such as envelopes, stamps, order forms, shopping list pads, index cards, etc. And of course there are the famous magnetic ABC’s for your fridge!

*The library needs to be a regular destination for the family, such as every week or two. Each family member needs their own library card and to be taught how to use it. Every library system has its own age requirements, so find out what yours is and obtain those cards as soon as you can. Have your children choose their own books to check out on each library trip. Establish a system for your family that includes a special place, such as a shelf or basket, to keep those books separate from your own, and a place to keep track of the books to be returned. My family parks books we are done with in a square basket on the work table to keep them together until the next library outing.

*Children should have a shelf of their own to hold their special books. Many homeschool groups use book clubs, such as Scholastic, to provide their members access to inexpensive books. Thrift shops, discount stores, bargain shelves in the big bookstores, and library book sales are also good sources of inexpensive books. For example, we make good use of the discard shelf at our library.

*Read together. Read aloud to your children everyday. Look up an informational website together. Pretend you are toy shopping: read the toy catalog and write wish lists. Read a recipe book with your child and choose a dish to make.

The more that reading happens in your house, the more it becomes an ordinary part of life, and your kids will begin to see reading as an essential skill that hopefully they will want to be able to do themselves.

***
The Author, Michelle B., is a full-time homeschooling mother of four who, as of this writing, has been homeschooling for 18 years. She is a former elementary school teacher in the private-school system.

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“Once again, Margaret and Richard create a CD that is great fun for the little ones. Plenty of repeating lines, music and “sound effects” make this a fine listen for preschoolers. The tales are told with respect for both the stories and listeners, no matter their age. Occasionally the volume of the music overpowers the words, but those moments are very few. Regardless of your age, if you are a collector of folktales and styles, add this CD to your collection.” -Storyteller.net Reviews

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