Story Café ~ JUNE 2024

Story Café is a stay and play session with a focus on Communication and language development, with an emphasis on the benefits of sharing stories together. We share a story with props, play and explore around the story with activities, enjoy a healthy snack and finish with songtime. Each child takes home a free picture book and a sticker. Story Cafe sessions are FREE, including all activities, picture book and snack for children and adults, and led by our teacher / Communication Champion. This month we shared...

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak 

Published by Penguin Books.  Find out more here -  https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/322742/where-the-wild-things-are-by-sendak-maurice/9780370007724  And watch the story on youtube here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALmNPxNehYE

Try paper boat making - https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Paper-Boat 

And here's a lovely short piece linking the story to how we deal with our children's feelings - https://childpsychotherapy.org.uk/resources-families/exploring-childrens-books/where-wild-things-are 

Where the Wild things are is a classic, perfect for bedtime. Here's what we did.

Story Café ~ MAY 2024

Story Café is a stay and play session with a focus on Communication and language development, with an emphasis on the benefits of sharing stories together. We share a story with props, play and explore around the story with activities, enjoy a healthy snack and finish with songtime. Each child takes home a free picture book and a sticker. Story Cafe sessions are FREE, including all activities, picture book and snack for children and adults, and led by our teacher / Communication Champion. This month we shared...

Bee by Britta Teckentrup 

A gorgeous story, shared with families on a gorgeous morning in the park. We hunted for bees in the trees, went on a nature scavenger hunt, played parachute games and popped bubbles.   Published by Little Tiger Books in 2016 Find out more here - https://www.booktrust.org.uk/book/b/bee/.   And here's a nice video so you can share the story at home - https://youtu.be/9rZchsF3Tlw

Here's what we did... 

We're going on a bear hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury

A classic story for sharing and joining in.  Brilliant rhyming text and lovely illustrations.  

We also shared a poem from Something about a Bear by Jackie Morris today. Find it in the children's library. 

and People need People by Benjamin Zephaniah. 

Who was Benjamin Zephaniah?  Read all about him on the Book Trust website here - https://www.booktrust.org.uk/authors/z/zephaniah-benjamin/ 

The illustrated version of the  beautiful poem from the late Benjamin Zephaniah. Benjamin was a performance poet, he wrote stories that rhyme, stood on a stage and told those stories to lots of people who loved to listen to him speak. He wanted everyone in the world to live together peacefully. The illustrations are great too - loads of opportunities to spot things in the pages and talk about how the people might be feeling and what they are doing.  We shared the story, explored painting our hands, making hand and people shaped stick puppets, and cutting out little chains of people holding hands.  

Listen / watch the story on youtube here - https://youtu.be/8uHHjAsPbLc?si=ch5zdrEBT93Pet2r

Sharing stories with families at First Steps Norwich CIC. Part of the NR3 Stories for families project, supported by The National Lottery Community Fund and Norfolk's Early Childhood and Family Service.  And a big thanks to Rose Feather for joining us to sketch families sharing stories and to engage families in exploring mark making.

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Story Café ~ APRIL 2024

Story Café is a stay and play  session with a focus on Communication and language development, with an emphasis on the benefits of sharing stories together. We share a story with props, play and explore around the story with activities, enjoy a healthy snack and finish with songtime. Each child takes home a free picture book and a sticker. Story Cafe sessions are FREE, including all activities, picture book and snack for children and adults, and led by our teacher / Communication Champion.  This month we shared...

A Busy Day for Birds by Lucy Cousins

Story Cafe | FEBRUARY 2024

These sessions have a focus on Communication and language development, with an emphasis on the benefits of sharing stories together. We share a story with props, play and explore around the story with activities, enjoy a healthy snack and finish with songtime. Each child takes home a free picture book and a sticker. Story Cafe sessions are FREE, including all activities, picture book and snack for children and adults, and led by our teacher / Communication Champion. 

Owl Babies by Martin Waddell and Patrick Benson.

Published by Walker Books. Find out more here - https://www.booktrust.org.uk/book/o/owl-babies/ 

A Story Cafe | Aliens love Panta Claus

 

Today we shared Aliens love Panta Claus bt]y Claire Freedman and Ben Cort.  The children all love space rockets at the moment so this is a lovely choice with a Christmassy take on the Aliens love Underpants stories.

Here's what we did in pictures...

A Story Cafe | Luna loves Library Day

 

This time we shared Luna loves Library Day by Joseph Coelho and illustrated by Fiona Lumbers.  It's a lovely story of a little girl called Luna whose Mum drops her off at the library to meet Dad, all ready with her book bag, library card, and books to return.  Luna and Dad look at some books and chose some for Luna to take home.  In the middle of the book, we are treated to a book in a book - the fairy story that Luna's Dad reads to her at the library.  One of the lovleiest moments in the book is when Luna chooses a book about magic tricks to take home - maybe she can magic Dad back home with her and Mum.

A Story Cafe | The Happy Hedgehog Band

 

This week at Story Cafe we shared The Happy Hedgehog Band by Jill Barton.  

STORY CAFE ~ The Paper Dolls

This week, we shared The Paper Dolls  by Juila Donaldson and illustrated by Rebecca Cobb.  Here they are (the paper dolls not the author and illustrator...) - Ticky and Tacky and Jackie the Backy and Jim with 2 Noses ans Joe with the Bow.

And on their adventures they meet ... a tiger, a crocodile, a dinosaur, the pigs at the farm, a jar of honey and a bus, and they lie down in the green grass.

STORY CAFE ~ Cock-a-doodle-doo! Farmyard Hullabaloo

Story Cafe is about inspiring a love of books and stories within families and early years settings.  

A Story Café | How do Dinosaurs go to School

Some of the children who come to Story Cafe are off to big school in September, some are off to nursery or preschool, and some will be coming back to see us in September.  So our stories today are about transitions to school, or nursery.  But babies, toddlers and young children go through many transitions just within a day, going out of the house to go shopping, going to the childminder or Grandma's house, going for a nap or to bed at the end of the day.  Sometimes it's good to remember that we all deal with transitions like these in different ways, all of which are OK, and sometimes it's hard, anmd someines we just need a little bit more time.

Yoga and Mindfulness with families

 

This week at First Steps our Thursday morning was a yoga and mindfulness special for families.  Here, I'll include what the benefits of yoga and mindfulness are for children, as well as loads of pictures and resources for you to use or share, or borrow from the library.

WHAT?

Gentle movement exercise

Nurtures a strong healthy body

A calm contented mind

And inner peace & self-awareness

Lots of the poses (asana) are based on animals which the original yogis thousands of years ago observed and imitated

The breath (pranayama) is a bridge from the body to the mind

The simplest mindfulness is simply to focus on the breath - raising awareness of what is happening right now, in the moment.

A Story Cafe | Oh No! Shark in the Snow by Nick Sharratt

At our Story Cafe last week we shared Oh No! Shark in the Snow by Nick Sharratt.  A wintry take on the classic Shark in the Park starring Timothy Pope and his quiff-bearing Dad.

Stories with props | Summer Term II 2022

No props with this one, we used ourselves as props and became all the different birds on the story.  The children especially like the pink "flingoes"....

A great going to school story for those little ones leaving us to go to big school 😥

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Stories with props | Spring Term 2 | 2022

 Pictorial guide to the stories we shared this half term, and some of the props I found to accompany the storytelling.

Review | Storytelling games

We've been playing with story telling.  It's a really important part of literacy, even at age 0-5.  The very youngest children need to learn how to be creative, critical thinkers, working out what might happen next in a story, or filling in a missing rhyming word, or thinking of an ending or describing a character.

We can read stories together and look at books together, but TELLING a story without a book is a different skill.

So we've been playing with a game called Animals at Home, and with some space and fairy tale storytelling dice.