The Workbook of values

Short stories are a great way to teach. They were the method choosen by most ancient philosophers, wise men and prophets. This is because stories are an excellent way to link many different minor parts in our memory, as these parts are needed to create a larger, more interesting, entity: the story plot. Cause the more interesting it is something to us, the more easily we memorize it. So if you build interesting, memorable stories, and tie them to the those values you want to teach, you will be quite successful at teaching. But once we create the story, we have to tell it. And we must avoid to sound like a non interesting thing at all! So make sure you prepare yourself to sound and act in a memorable way. Please don't just read the story!! Have you ever seen a child carefully listening news on tv? I haven't, either. That's because children are not “just” interested in words: they are interested in the whole message, the whole story. Unfortunately, or fortunately, they don't get each word's meaning. They depend a lot on the context, the voice tone, and face and body expression to get the full meaning of a message. So your face, your voice and your body must provide the right context for wolves, princess, warriors, ducks, fairies and whatever characters you play. Very often, that means to add some extra words for a character, to create adtional dialogs to complement the text, or to be more detailed in a specific description. Go ahead, you must control the story... and your audience, and not vice versa. One last comment, regarding audience's control. Children will tend to follow your time, exaggerating it. So if you want them to be a bit quiet or calm (sometimes you won't, as it is quite funny!), better not to look wacky or too much excited. Be expressive, but talk slowly and wishpering. Finally, if they are not more than four children, you can interact with them and let them ask free questions and answer them; but if they are five or more, do not let them interrupt you: if they realize they can control the story time, they will, and you will be lost :-)