Workshops
Workshop Notes
NYSSMA Conference, Rochester, NY
Saturday, December 1, 1:00 - 2:15 pm
Literature, Storytelling and Music in the Classroom:
Dear NYSSMA Conferees,
We very much enjoyed your participation in
and contributions to our music/literature/storytelling
workshop. Your homework is simple: tell stories
to your students.
Here are some storytelling resources:
http://www.storynet.org/
The National Storytelling Network:
information on storytelling events,
conferences and resources throughout
the U.S.
http://www.augusthouse.com/
http://www.yellowmoon.com/
August House Press and Yellow Moon Press:
two wonderful publishers devoted to storytelling
books, recordings and DVDs.
There are storytelling conferences and festivals
throughout the United States. As a Vermonter,
my favorite is the League for the Advancement
of New England Storytelling (LANES) annual
Sharing the Fire Conference in the greater
Boston area:
http://www.lanes.org/stf/sharing_the_fire.html
Here are the notes for our workshop:
Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night not in the handout
- Download: FoxWentOut.pdf
This is on the Amidons’ Faerie’s
Gift CD
This traditional classic has great language for children. I created
a storytelling introduction that, like our other storytelling song
introductions was gleaned from the details of the song itself.
Try creating your own.
Owl and the Pussycat The song is in the handout,
and a picture book of the poem is referenced in the
handout bibliography.
This is on the Amidons’ Faerie’s Gift CD
We encourage you to make up your own songs to poems, and
see how it makes you, the children, and the poem come alive.
In the Fiddle There is a Song not in the handout.
by Durga Bernhard, Chronicle Books LLC, Pub. Date:
June 2006, ISBN-13: 9780811849517
Music: CD called Brittany Haas: track: Dry and Dusty
We could not find a sales source for this on the web.
Try e-mailing Brittany:
ladrome@gmail.com
Owl Moon the book and background music are referenced
in the handout bibliography.
Faerie’s Gift
This is on the Amidons’ Faerie’s Gift CD
- Download:Faerie’sGift.pdf
Mary Alice learned this from the picture
book
of the same name. The songs are her ideas,
and her creations. Try making up your own
songs as part of the stories you are telling.
Sir Gawaine and Lady Ragnell
- Download: Gawain.pdf
Learned from various sources.
Acting out stories
Children do this quite naturally; you just
set it up and, as much as possible, get out
of the way. After telling a folktale I give
them the homework to retell it aloud,
we might go through a speed through of
the story or do a quick group map of the
story or discuss the story (What was the
funniest/saddest/most scary/most memorable
moment?) Once they all know the story well,
you are the narrator, and maybe also the musician
(guitar, accordion). Pull the characters (and
human props) from the ‘audience’ of children
sitting in a bunch in front of the ‘stage’.
All the action takes place right in the middle
in front of the audience. The ‘actors’ speak
loudly so everyone can hear. If they forget
what happens next you can feed them a line
as the narrator: “And then Arthur asked Sir
Gromer what the riddle was.”
You can use this method to create a musical performance
with added instrumental music, songs and dancing, or
just do it once and leave it at that.
Johnny Appleseed The song is in the handout, and
a picture book of the poem is referenced in the
handout bibliography.
This is on the Amidons’ Faerie’s Gift CD
Mother Earth this picture book, and the music Mary Alice
chose to go with it, is referenced in the handout bibliography.
I Miss You Every Day not in the handout.
by Simms Taback
Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, NY, NY
ISBN 978-0-670-067912-1
(not a song, but associated with
Woody Guthrie’s I’m Gonna Mail Myself to You
which is on the Amidons’ Faerie’s Gift CD.)
Chiney Doll song is on handout
There is a wonderful book of this song that is
sadly out of print:
Mommy, Buy Me a China Doll : Adapted from an Ozark children's song
by Harve Zemach (Adapter), Margot Zemach (Illustrator)
but I found some at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000GT1TCS/ref=dp_olp_2/103-8219085-7137422?ie=UTF8&qid=1195487410&sr=1-6
Sam sings Chiney Doll
I always introduce this song with a story, the idea of which I
got from that picture book. I had always done the story with
the book when I told it to 2-year-old Sam, and when we were
recording Sam singing familiar songs and Mary Alice got to
Chiney Doll, Sam could not sing the song without telling
the story: as far as we know, the first story he ever told.
As I mentioned at the workshop, a teacher who listened to that
who knew a lot about child development said, “When Sam
was grunting his way through the story it wasn’t that he
didn’t remember the story; he knew it perfectly well. It was
that he was turning the images in his head into language.”
And that is what we do when we tell stories, and we listen to
stories we turn the language back into images.
Children need to hear stories, they need the classic folktales as
a way to help sort out their emotional lives. The archetypal
characters that inhabit folktales: the kings, queens, princes,
princesses, ogres, giants, witches, wise old women and men,
and everyman Jacks and Marys are, according to one of
my storytelling mentors, Donald Davis, all part of our own
inner selves. When a prince marries a princess at the end of
a folktale, Donald Davis goes on, that marriage represents our
male self marrying our female self; a healthy emotional integration.
There are depths of meaning of these wonderful folktales that
we will never fully plumb, but whenever we tell folktales to
children, it is wonderful to see them uncover endless and
often surprising new meanings.
Tell away!
Peter and Mary Alice Amidon