CM: Children and Story

Chapter 9 in Children Matter - a short but rich chapter.

Apparently the oldest written description of storytelling (Egypt 2000-1300 B.C.E.) involved the sons of a great pyramid builder. Whether these were grown sons or children I don't know. The Psalms (and our lives) are full of older generations telling stories to younger generations but it's interesting that this example isn't the older telling stories to the younger. It's the other way around.

Most of the focus on story-telling in Christian Education is adult to child. And the authors make some wonderful comments about the multi-generational appeal of great stories, the craftsmanship of story-telling, point of view, audience, holding to the detail of scripture, not watering God's stories down, recognizing that there are more stories in scripture than we tell but many are better delivered to teens and adults. Good stories allow us to participate in the story capturing our imagination. We're not merely spectators. Good stories teach without explanation or interpretation. They can even say different things to different people, different things to different ages, different things to people going through crisis.

Here's where my brain went. How often do we give children opportunity to tell stories? If we're in the middle of a lesson and we ask if there are any questions and we get children telling their long stories we tend to cut children off. But what if we find a time and place to let them tell their stories? It can be in a big group. It can be smaller groups. It can be personal stories, family stories. What if we let them retell their favorite Bible stories? Listen to children retell stories and you find out what jumped out at them. You can also catch misunderstandings. Maybe we're going for accuracy and "truth" but maybe we need to listen to find out what they heard or what the story is reaching for in the child - what the story uncovered."I don't remember that part in the Bible story. What made you think of that?"

Do you use real life photos from the lands the stories come from to introduce a story? A picture of the Nile and the long grasses to go with the story of Moses? A picture of the desert? A cup of sand? Do you turn the thermostat up high? Before you tell a story, imagine yourself in this place instead of where you live. What would be the same? What would be different?

Very young children can use a printed picture to tell a story. They can play the story with felt or 3 dimensional story figures. They can use puppets and a puppet theater. (Children have such wonderful imaginations they can probably tell a good story with fabric and sticks.) Older children can draw pictures and tell the story that goes with their picture. Pre-teens and teens can write stories from the point of view of a different character ( or an observer, an animal, a tree, a rock) in a Bible story. Older children who don't like to read or write can still tell their story or create props to tell their story. They can act their story out. Older students can recreate stories with skits and puppet shows. Different classes can perform their stories for each other or for parents and friends. You can keep story telling very simple or make it a big production.

If you have five different student versions of the Christmas story, ask them what was the same in all of the stories? Tell the story going around the circle and let each child add a part to the story.

How often do we leave time to ponder and respond to a story? [CM p. 188-189] The design of Young Children in Worship gives us some handles on this but in most classes we're more prone to rush on to the questions and discussion or the related activity. Sometimes kids are ready to move on. Sometimes, they need a few moments to ponder or to reorient themselves to the present.

The authors quote Edith Schaeffer, "A sermon is always improved with a story, but a story is never improved with a sermon." [CM p. 189] We're teachers! We're adults! We always have to comment. A child might not get it! But we can learn a lot from the things that children "get" if we take time to ask and listen without judging. Chances are, it isn't what we expect but that's ok. It gives us opportunity to learn something new or to adjust misunderstandings.

In one class I taught with preschoolers we hung the posters or the projects after each lesson - something to remind us of the story. We hung the images like a time line and each week we went back to the pictures from the weeks before to see what we remembered. Who was the story about? What happened in the story? What was the memory verse? Did anything happen at home or at school that reminded you of a Bible story? What happened? What did you do? This is more didactic than most of what's here but it's a good way to review and remember stories.

They quote Shaw [CM p. 177] saying, "What is learned in story is not so much information or knowledge in the usual sense but is far closer to wisdom, understanding, or lived truth..."

Wisdom is often the missing objective in our teaching and learning but one of the most important. It's neat to think of the simple act of storytelling as one of the most effective tools to teach wisdom - one of the hardest things to teach and measure - the one thing we'll spend our whole life learning.