My Summer A’ha Moment

Dear Friends, 

Every night I read my daughter the same two bedtime stories. She seems to love the routine and hopefully she enjoys the different readings I give each night.Sometimes I change my pace, character, accent, tone, or inflection, to make it a bit different, and to keep myself engaged in the process.  It’s a nighttime readers theater and Grace has a lifetime ticket.  Some nights I add a few stories if it is a bit early or if she is taking her time with the last milk droplets in her sippy cup. But there are always two books that are the “must reads” for bedtime: Twinkle Twinkle and The Big Night Night Book. These two books have become our tradition and bedtime routine, so to keep the story alive I change the point of view every night. I did not realize what an effect my narration and reading routine would have so early on, until recently. Grace, who loves flipping through her books endlessly throughout the day, started talking to herself in various sing-songy tones while browsing through her stories. This new chatter is different from her normal baby talk, it sounds as if she is imitating the way my voice moves when I read to her.  It has been one of the best new discoveries as a mom but also reaffirms the power reading and creative play have on child development.

I realized my bedtime routine with Grace had a strong connection with my Creative Dramatics course I taught to graduate students at a local college a few weeks ago. I presented ways to display content through dramatic play: storytelling, tableaux, poetry, and drawing.  Throughout the course we identified multiple methods of presenting content through dramatics. As we worked with fifth graders on devising a theatre piece the graduate students saw how these different strategies made well-known stories and fairy tales become fresh and almost original pieces. It was shocking for some of them to believe that stories like The Three Pigs or Little Red could have a connection with fifth graders and even entertaining for adults. I realized that from my class and my bedtime theatre routine with grace, divergent thinking is my new path of exploration in arts education. I want to push myself and my students to think outside the box and of the many possibilities in the material being learned. I’m not sure how I’ll do but my discovery with Grace and my students makes me feel it will be worth the exploration.

Thanks summer a’ha moment!

Live, Love , Learn,

Michele & The Write Teacher(s)