A Freeby: Episode 1 of My podcast

• A podcast for anyone interested in learning how to tell stories for children to enjoy.
• It doesn’t matter whether they are with you or not, you can still have contact through the internet, with or without a video screen, or can phone, email or write to them.
• I started when I became a grandma  – but my grandkids live in Germany ad Canada.
• At first, I started by telling fairy stories I remembered from my childhood.
• The eldest Thomas started telling me stories when he was nearly 3years old.
• I’m trying to offer a bit of help, not telling you how it should be done, of course.
• Using stories, especially ones made up specially, is a great way of building a great, fun relationship.
• Everyone can do it, it’s never too late to try, and it’s only a question of practice.
• Still not convinced, think about something that happened when you were a kid, amuse them with that. Look at other stories, what would you have done if you were the adult? How different would it be?
• Children will be delighted if you tell them stories, they won’t even mind if it goes wrong, they may not even notice.
• Usually, but not always, I make my grandchildren the people the story is about, then I add me in and my pets, and a bit of magic – but you can do whatever works best for you as you’ll feel most comfortable with that.
• Still unsure? Read a few short stories written by others and remember which you enjoyed the most, think why and try to copy it.

I’ll be back soon, first week in November, but you can catch up at anytime.

All the Podcast episodes are also on the Extras page on this website for you to hear.

Or, just search for the telltales2kids podcast (by Julie Pryke).

 My story for your children is on the page below, it’s only 126 words, and I didn’t really know what would happen as I was telling it but just thought of each of the three objects one at a time and brought them into the story.  You can see why I like magic because anything can happen! It is in my book ‘Tell Tales’ and the first 2 episode are based loosely on this and then we’ll explore a bit further.

A ‘30 second story’ for Thomas – he chose a race, a frog and chocolate.

Thomas and Fini were racing on their bikes down the path near Nana’s house and Suzi and Wanda ( my dog and cat) were racing along beside them when…

very strangely…

• a large turquoise frog jumped on the back of Thomas’s bike and put his hands over Thomas’s eyes.
• Fortunately, frogs have long, spread-out fingers so Thomas could still see where he was going. (I mimed that bit)
• He called out to Fini to help him.
• She reached into her backpack where she kept all her magic things and pulled out a piece of chocolate.
• She threw it to the frog who ate it all up and became a little, ordinary, green frog again.
• They took him to the pond and let him go,

             – then they had a lovely picnic and raced back home.