Heads or Tales

Participation Stories- The Great Big Enormous Turnip

Yesterday, my friend Bev came over to pick up the books to use with the Columbus Story Adventures project, and we chatted awhile. She’s going to tell stories at a school with four first grades and wanted to have children come up and help her tell a story. We talked about using the story of The Great Big Enormous Turnip. That story, about cooperation and the power of the weakest, is so much fun to tell with kindergarten to second graders, and it provides good experience with spatial relationships, sequencing and body control as well.

The turnip story is about an old lady who plants a tiny seed. The seed grows into a huge turnip, which she can’t pull out. Her grandson, granddaughter, the dog, the cat and finally the mouse help. It ‘s the mouse’s final pull that does the trick. When I tell the story, I’m the grandma and I call on children to come up and help. I grab the turnip around its huge imaginary leaves. The children, each in their turn, grab each other and then me until we make a long line of helpers. Each time someone new comes on the scene, we count to three and pull on the turnip. When we are finally successful, after the mouse comes, we make a big circle and pantomime picking up the big turnip. We place it in the pot for soup. The audience stirs, and we stir. Our turnip soup is “the best soup ever.” Finally, everyone receives a round of applause.

To do that story successfully, the children have the challenge of holding onto the child in front and pulling without pulling anyone over. Everyone must also pull a little harder at the end. As the different characters come up to take their place in the drama, I hold my hand over the head of each group and the audience recites the order of helpers with me. We say, “ the mouse (or mice..it’s fun to have more than one of everything), grabbed the cat who grabbed the dog who grabbed the granddaughter who grabbed the grandson who grabbed the grandma.” I’m always amazed at the control the kids involved use to help pull the turnip and to make a circle, lift the huge turnip and drop it in the soup.

It’s even more fun to follow up with the book…

Here are some versions of that old story:

The Enormous Carrot by Vladimir Vasilevich Vagin—great illustrations and simply told.

A Little Story About A Big Turnip Tatiana Zunshine

The Enormous Turnip by Aleksey Tolstoy – This old story made for beginning readers

Grandma Lena’s Big Ol’ Turnip by Denia Hester – This one has a city setting and a soul food result.

Feedback

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to tell stories at a kindergarten to fourth grade school close to Cincinnati. The school had a marvelous sound system, and the kids were divided perfectly so that the age level stretch was not too much.

First thing in the morning, a big group of kindergarteners and first graders gathered on the gym floor. In the front row was a kindergarten boy who was a squirmer and a wiggler. Half way through the third story, he began to mouth the word, “b o r i n g,” to me. Really, he was saying it out loud very very quietly because, eventually, his teacher tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to come and sit by her. I was right in the middle of that story, when he said those words, and couldn’t change my horses in midstream. The other kids were involved, but I was glad to know that his listening tolerance was running low. With him in mind, all the following stories invited a lot of participation.

That afternoon, I had the boy still in my head when the pm kindergarten group trooped in, I stuffed the program full of movement and rhythm and stories that invited the kids to take part. There’s nothing like a little feedback when it’s needed.

Sleeping Beauty

This week I continued working with that great group of kindergarteners. Over five days, I told three stories and we spent some time with each story, including writing a giant letter to the giant in Jack and the Bean Stalk. On the last day, I told the story of Briar Rose or Sleeping Beauty. Briar Rose is the name give by the Grimm Brothers. I’m not sure where Sleeping Beauty came into being. I wonder if it is from Disney. Following the story, I taught them the song called Thorn Rosa. It’s an easy tune and allows the whole story to be acted out while singing. At first we were a little tentative, especially since my singing voice takes a few runs to get going, but by the time we sang it a few times with boys and girls switching all the roles, we were into it.

My source for the song is Viola Spolin’s box of acting cards entitled The Theater Game File. That box of theater ideas was not cheap, but it has been helpful in storytelling camp and with the kindergarteners as well. I just grabbed the card and referred to it as we sang. There are other sources for this great song on the Internet, however. Just type in “Thorn Rosa” and song. The best site is DLTK. (WWW.dltk-teach.com/rhymes/sleeping-beauty/mlyrics.htm) Often when I try clicking on an URL, it doesn’t work, so look down the list for DLTK…the DLTK site includes the tune as well as the words. After we sang and sang, I shared Trina Hyman’s book Sleeping Beauty. Her illustrations are haunting and the kids loved them.

Let me know if you use the song or share the book and what you do with them.

Kindergarten Residency and Story Necklaces

This week I’m with St. Joe’s kindergarteners. Monday we started out in the gym, but because a fire alarm was pending, we went outside in the sunshine. There are 12 of us, including their teacher and me. Really …a group that’s not too big and not too small. I told them the story of how Rabbit lost his tail after being tricked to stick it in the ice to catch fish by fox. Rabbit is rescued by owl and other animals. Yesterday, Tuesday, I asked a very quiet girl to pick a friend and show us where our stage should be. Together they made a rabbit’s frozen lake from a circle on the gym floor and, using the basketball free throw boundaries, declared the boundaries of our stage. We acted the story out a second time. For this run through, almost everyone wanted to be fox. We only had two rabbits. Afterwards, I used an idea I learned from Lyn Ford. We made story necklaces.

Here’s how to do it:

1.Decide on the important parts of the story. I used: beginning, rabbit, fox, fish, ice, owl, animals and end. Using a bag of buttons (see below for more about them)I gave each story section its own button shape. The beginning is a triangle. Rabbit is an animal shape. Fox is a square and so on.

2.Using 11.5 by 17 inch paper, draw or Xerox the symbols with the corresponding words underneath in order on paper. Make them real size so the children can match with their own buttons. Also make enough copies so that each child will have their own.

3.Go over the story and show what the buttons stand for. Ask the children to match the symbols on their own paper.

4.Using jewelry twine, create a necklace. The necklace must be strung starting at the end of the story.
so that the children can retell it from left to right. When the necklaces are strung. The children can tell the story to you. They can take it home and tell it to their family.

There are so many ways to use that story necklace:

The children now have a visual representation of their story to take home and share.
The paper and parts can be put in the classroom to practice.
Words can be written under the symbols so that they can be copied.
Give each child a button and see if they can line up according to where their part of the story occurs.
Tell the story in an ensemble having each child tell the part their button represents.

Resources: I got the buttons from Oriental Trading Company. They are plastic, cheap and colorful. The bag I chose has a triangle, rectangle, square, a small animal head, and a bow. The fish and the animals in the story were smaller filler beads, also cheap. I also bought the jewelry cord from Oriental Trading Company…it’s black. I put a piece of masking tape on the end of each section of cord to give it a point so the cord wouldn’t fray and to make it easier to thread through the buttonholes.

A good resource for the story is Children Tell Stories by Hamilton and Weiss

Even better would be to decide on the elements of the story as a group and have the children select their own symbols. Oriental Trading Company has some very nice animal beads and buttons. I didn't have enough of several of the buttons, and I was worried that the children might spend precious time arguing over what they wanted.