Program Summary: Around the World Tales

K-2 Book Adventure Progam Summary: Around the World Tales

In April we did our last “K-2 Book Adventure” of the school year, using “Around the World Tales” as the theme, which kind of leads into the “One World, Many Tales” Summer Reading theme we’ll be using this year. Terri, Brad, and I presented for a smaller than usual crowd of about 40.

We used PowerPoint slides to frame the program, introducing each story with an image of a world map, then clicking to add an arrow pointing to the country the next story was from, as well as the book cover.

Our opening story was Head Body Legs, presented with storytelling and selected scans. Details are posted here.

Next we presented The Greatest of All with volunteers from the audience. Details are here.

Then Brad did a version of The Musicians of Bremen. Brad’s a very talented storyteller with lots of great ideas. This summer he’s put together a program that he’s presenting at several local libraries, including ours, called “Around the World in Eight Stories.” (He’s on the web at http://bradcmusic.wordpress.com/). He uses a lot of music and child participation, so this was a good fit for him to try one of the tales he’ll be telling this summer. He used child volunteers, each with an instrument, to play the roles of the animals. So each time he would mention an animal by name, the child would play a quick refrain on the instrument. Donkey thumped a drum; Cat blew on a harmonica; Rooster with a slide whistle was especially fun for the audience.

Our last story was Conejito, acted out with costumes and props by me and Terri. Details are here.

Between each story, we highlighted the ways that similar stories can be found in different parts of the world. We didn’t tell full versions, but showed slides from different versions of the same story. For this first example, we showed a book cover of Cinderella, followed by two questions and answers from the story: “Who helped her?” (fairy godmother) and “What did she wear on her feet?” (glass slippers). Then we showed the same pieces for different versions, such as The Irish Cinderlad (helped by magic bull + wore giant boots on feet). We also used the map of the world slide to identify each country of origin geographically. As a transition, this worked well the first time, but was less interesting the second and third times (Red Riding Hood and The Gingerbread Man)…too predictable I guess. For this group, we need to keep things moving quickly and maintain the kids’ curiosity with new stuff. It was good to introduce the concept to them, and many of the multiple versions we had on display did get checked out.

Our school promotion for this program was built around Conejito. Terri and I acted out the first half of the story, then stopped just before the little rabbit headed back down the hill, with the teaser: how will he get past Senor Leon, Senor Tigre, and Senor Zorro? Even though we didn’t get our usual attendance this time, I I thought it was a perfect teaser and the kids clearly enjoyed it, which is what really matters.