reading stories

Sometimes the best thing to do is to just hand over the book and let one of the children read for the group.. especially a book that we have not read since last term... a book that the children knew inside out last term... but now required more interpretation of the pictures to be able to tell the story... with the occasional line being totally intact (and not always the line you expect either) - and the best part is seeing yourself in the children, seeing my deliveries and my enthusiasm for stories being captured, and interpreted by the children "reading" for their peers. It was a humbling experience.

But my favourite part is when children look at the pictures and interpret them totally their own way... I am, secretly laughing at the funny but logical connections, but glowing with pride , that the children don't feel inhibited by not knowing the story, but can create their own... and when you get to this page (below) and look at the picture of Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson I bet you never expected that "...and then her legs were magicked away... "where are my legs, they have gone?"" would be what you get to hear. It took me totally by surprise but made perfect sense...

A bit like yesterday when we were rhyming with names... not with real words, just rhyming for fun... and I told them how at another prechool the children rhymed my name Suzanne with Lasagne (no "e" sound at the end in Swedish) -
Suzanne-lasagne
the next thing I knew was one of the children rhymed his friend's name with "meat"
name - "meat"
- of course it didn't rhyme at all... but he had made the food connection.... it was one of the highlights of my day.... and yesterday had quite a few highlights!!

I love how children can make connections that we forget to make. I hope I stay open to them and get to share them and never lose that ability to see life from many perspectives... (and hopefully get to learn many more perspectives on the way)