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A Story Cafe | Stick Man

Today we read "Stick Man" by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler.  I wanted a story with autumn and winter in it, and maybe also Christmas, and I love all Julia Donaldson stories.  Stick Man is perfect for sharing with families as a Story Cafe - children can join in with the repeated refrains - "I'm Stick Man. I'm Stick Man, I'm Stick Man that's me, and I want to go home to the family tree".  And there are opportunities for finishing off the rhyming chunks, such as here - "Stick man Oh Stick Man beware of the .....".  At this point I get the correct prop out of the bag and the children shout out what Stick man has to beware of.



So, as usual we read the story.  And then families go off to sit around the big circle of tables to make their own story props to take home.

A communication friendly space based on the story is as always set up so that children and their families can explore the story before we start.  This time I used white cloth (snow), blue cloth (the sea, the river), real sticks and leaves, a cardboard cut out swan, spade, laminated copy of the "family tree", snowman, santa, girl and boy puppets, and some words and pictures related to the story to inspire talk.




We made Stick men, Stick ladies and Stick children from real sticks, along with fabric scraps, real leaves, googly eyes, pipe cleaners and other junk.


We stopped all the prop-making for a snack or  coffee, then all got together on the carpet at the end to recap the story, draw all the children's names out of a bag and give them all a free book (one lucky winner went home with a copy of Stick man), and give all the children a certificate and a family challenge to take home to talk about.  Some of the wonderful things that the children and their families made are in the photos below:






We really enjoyed sharing Stick Man with a new set of families who joined us in September.  And we will be offering them another 5 opportunities to share stories at our Story Cafe through the year.



Stick Man Oh Stick Man beware of the children!!



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