Story Spinning Experiences With Kids

                                                                Got half an hour responsible-free  break. Chose to write. Felt it will be refreshing.    This post is about my experience with kids while training them to spin a story.  I feel sometimes changing your routine tasks gives not only happiness but also a gives a lot of relaxation.  That’s what my story spinning experience gave me.

                                              This habit of story spinning started when my kid was one year old. My kid can’t sleep without a song and a story. I had practiced a few set of songs  before her birth and I use to sing them in sequence and continue the sequence if she continues to be awake.  I found that difficult and boring with that fixed set, so started to add on a  story when she was ok to understand. Then one- song and one-story formula worked for a long time. Now  the current protocol is one story on week days and two stories on weekends. In the early days, I use to tell her the fixed set of old stories and when they got dried up, I started spinning my own story. I will usually start with any object, event or any person and then add on scenarios related to it. I use stories as one  of the  modes to  teach her  many things which she won’t listen out of the story-time. Now she has become so addicted to that. Sometimes she would not want a story to end, rather she would want to extend it. Sometimes she will herself give some ideas to extend. Sometimes, no  no every time she would want only comical stories. I also believe in humour a lot and so she is.  Anything minus humour would be boring for both of us. Many times, I  have controlled my laughter listening to  ppl talking so seriously for long  time.

                                              Yeah, coming to the actual topic, I thought like why don’t I train kids to spin a story. Why should them all the time recite the same old stories. I contacted Ms. Priya, head of Crayons, Pre-School, near my home. She was interested in this and organized a story spinning session at her school. I would like to thank her at this moment for believing in me. I was first doubtful if I could gel  well with kids. Teaching teens at college is  totally different from teaching kids. So when I  was waiting in the school on one Sunday for that session, one kid entered much before the session. I wanted to  test my strategy that   I had formulated to spin a story the same way I use to at home on her and  it worked on her. So,  the session went like this. I called on each kid and asked them their interesting stuffs like food, dress, parents and asked few questions related to the previous question and finally combined all the answers as a single story. I was training few grown-up kids to write  story using the same formula in parallel.  Seeing those grown-up kids, the kids who finished spinning story orally also wanted to write though they din know how to write. They were so enthusiastic writing about their mom and dad. 99 % of them wanted to become a teacher 😊 That’s so nice.  One kid said she wants to become  a doctor  and also a  teacher 😊.

                                            Speaking with kids  actually is equivalent to any mind relaxing techniques we may know . That's what I found. You can be sure of getting back only the truth when you speak with kids. I don’t blame the grown-ups. We grown-ups including me will have many constraints reacting or talking everything we have on our mind.  And yeah, the love the kids  give you back is voluminous. I was walking back home after the session. All the kids who were also leaving home with their parents waved hands saying, “bye mam" with that cute  and true smile  which will surely  make u feel so richer .

                                      Hoping to explore such many ways to keep the kid in me stay young. Lets see how it goes 😊               

                           

Thanks for reading :)