Magic box story game

I guess I could pretend that I put that box of trinkets in the picture yesterday as a teaser. Here it is again.

The box is for a game I use with kids from about age 6 and up. It's called "Magic Box," and I have two versions. 

Magic Box Full

In this game, I put a variety of little toys in the box and have kids draw one out so we can tell a story about it. If we get stuck, we pull another toy out to move the story along. 

Magic Box Empty

There's nothing inside but my imagination. I open the box slowly, toward myself, so I'm the only one who can see what's inside. "Oh! I can't believe it! There are two chickens playing football in here!" I might say. Then I pass the box to the person next to me and ask what they see. We pass the box around the room until everyone has had a chance to say something. 

I prefer Magic Box Empty. I find that kids often will follow the pattern I set. If there are animals playing a sport, they continue with that idea. Sometimes I prompt for other details: "Really? Who's watching the game?" It's even more fun when they come up with something unusual. Once I played this with a group of second graders. The game was going along fairly predictably until one little girl looked in the box and said, "There's a big old tooth in here!" 

In the spirit of improvisation, I accepted this. "Really? Whose is it?"

"Yours."

"Mine! I didn't even realize I'd lost a tooth!" 

At a workshop in at St. Francis College, Sao Paulo, 2008

Sometimes there will be a literal-minded kid who says, "There's nothing in here." I suggest quietly that they pretend there is something. This may or may not work. It's important to be respectful of the student, not to make this into a big embarrassing deal. I may say, "That's okay, maybe you'll see something in there another time," or "Darn, it got invisible again.

Any little box works. You could decorate a shoebox or use a small recipe box. I like the one I have because it's in the shape of a book. I got it in Brazil in a hobby shop. 

Story Games workshop

On Thursday I gave the second of three workshops on this tour, for teachers at Cultura Inglesa. The request had been for interactive storytelling, so I gathered up my workshop on story games and was ready to roll.

I love this workshop. My goal is to give the teachers tools they can take back and use, to engage the participants in a meaningful way, and to have fun. That last one is often my goal in whatever I do.

After I introduced myself, we dove into story games. Some highlight story structure, some just loosen everybody up. In one, used by many storytellers in workshops, I tell a story and the participants split into groups and retell it by turns. This gives everybody a chance to feel successful. 

One game I planned to teach, but didn't have time for, is Magic Box. In Rio, I found a great box in the shape of a book in a kind of craft store (eventually I might decorate it). It's perfect for this game. 

I begin by opening the lid and telling the participants what I see inside. It could be a couple of chickens playing football, it could be a big birthday party for the queen, it could be anything. I pass the box to the next person who describes either a continuation or a new scene. I learned this years ago from somebody on the storytell listserv (who?) and have had a great time with it ever since. Another version is to fill it with small toys or figurines and make up a story from these.

I hadn't expected to teach puppetry, but Sylvia, who helped organize this workshop, saw me perform last week and asked if I would add a little in. I gave a basic introduction to using hand puppets in storytelling (different from using puppets in a stage show) and answered questions before the break.

After the break, we moved on to the importance of body, gesture, voice and emotion in stories. We played a few more games to underline these elements, including Park Bench, which I learned many years ago from Heather Forest . 

One of the most valuable parts of this workshop was at the end, in the reflections. This is a new component of workshops for me, something I learned from the Lied.Art.Teach seminars led by the folks from the Kennedy Center. The teachers talked about what they learned, about how they might use these techniques with their students, about other things they noticed. In the Kennedy Center seminar, I learned a useful tool: the six-second rule. After asking the participants a question or for other feedback, wait six seconds before filling the silence. Participants will often jump in at this point. 

I'll do another workshop on Wednesday at a school. I hope it goes as well as this one did.

Kindy Kids

Today I gave a workshop on songs, stretches and games at Kindy Kids school, for teachers. I'd met many of them on Thursday when I told stories for their students, as well as for the students at a few other schools in their consortium. These teachers were great! So was Katia, the principal! They gave up their Saturday morning to be there, joined right in on all the songs, asked good questions, and I think had a good time. I certainly did.

The children who saw me on Thursday made me a thank-you card:

Here's the inside:

And a detail from the inside: 

Claudia, the wonderful teacher who presented this to me also told me the story of the Indian girl who was promised as the bride of a prince. Though this was a great honor, her true love lived in the Amazon river, a pink manatee (boto cor-de-rosa). She went to the Sun god and asked if she could be married to the pink manatee. No, she would have to follow her family's wishes. She cried under the Moon and then asked the Moon god if she could marry the pink manatee. Yes, but only under one condition, that she be changed into a flower, a Victoria Regia. She agreed to this condition and was changed into a Victoria Regia, a flower that blooms pink in the moonlight.

When I heard this, I thought maybe it was a night-blooming cereus, but I've just looked it up to discover that it's a specific kind of water lily. Lovely!  This is the flower they put on the outside of the card, and it's the reason they said, "Thank you for being such a flower in our garden!!!" 

By the way, it IS spring here, with Halloween just around the corner. 

The Grammar of Fantasy by Gianni Rodari

The Grammar of Fantasy: An Introduction to the Art of Inventing Stories is my Fahrenheit 451 book. You know, when all the books are being burned, there are people out in the forest memorizing their favorites so the work will not perish. I'd be out there with this book. I've even written notes in it--I never write in books.

Why do I love it so much? Rodari was funny, smart and he truly understood kids. He packed this book with ideas, games, stories, random thoughts and serious buffoonery. If he were still alive, I'd be sitting at his feet. In his preface, Rodari writes:

I hope this small book can be useful for all those people who believe it is necessary for the imagination to have a place in education; for all those who trust in the creativity of children; and for all those who know the liberating value of the word. (p. 3-4)

Later he says: "In our schools there is too little laughter, if I may generalize. The idea that the education of a mind must be a dismal affair is among the most difficult things to overcome." (p. 14)

I love it that he has a chapter called Lenin's Grandfather. Here's how it begins:

This chapter is merely a continuation of the previous one. But I am too fond of the idea of a chapter title on Lenin's grandfather to give up the arbitrary caesura. (p. 20)

That cracks me up every time I read it. He goes on to explain that Lenin's grandfather kept benches under the windows in the living room, because the children liked to go in and out that way instead of through the door. He didn't forbid the behavior, he just made it a bit safer.

He writes about the fantastic binomial, taking two unrelated items to make a story. When he was a teacher, he'd have a kid write a word on one side of a two-sided blackboard and another kid write on the other side, at the same time. Then they would create a story from those two. He talks about story logic--for example, a character made of wood has to be careful around fire.

I've found great games in this book, such as "Little Red Riding Hood in a helicopter." Take a familiar story and add an unfamiliar element, then see what happens. Or "Fairy tale salad" where the characters from one story meet those of another (in adult books, Jasper Fforde's Nursery Crimes series do this wonderfully).

He was a puppeteer at a few times in his life. Here's something he says about puppets:

The true language of the puppets and marionettes is in their movement. They are not made for long monologues or dialogues. If Hamlet recites his monologue in a puppet play, there must be at the very least a devil who from time to time tries to steal the skull and to replace it with a tomato. On the other hand, a single puppet can maintain a dialogue for hours with its audience of children without tiring them, if it knows how to do this. (p. 72)

Trixie approves.

I first heard about Rodari in 1988, when I was in Bulgaria doing research on services for children in Bulgarian public libraries and reading rooms. My friend Vesselin asked me if I'd read this book. Nope, never heard of it. Before I left, he gave me a photocopy of the entire book, translated from Italian into Bulgarian.

I can read Bulgarian, but I'm lazy. I put that photocopy in the back of my file cabinet and forgot about it. Every now and then I'd search for the book at the university library, in case it had been translated into English. It was there in Russian, but because Rodari was Communist, it was not popular in the West. In 1996, Jack Zipes' translation was published. I bought it.

Did I read it? No. It sat on my shelf. In 1998 I was working on a library program that had at its base child-directed learning. I was learning about the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education (very cool!). When I asked a RE listserv for resources, the first response was, "Have you read the Rodari book?" I took it off the bookshelf, settled myself on the sofa and wolfed the book right down. I've now read it about eight times.