Everything is a story

Another first, only at the DI. The Story telling and Story writing workshop for kids was a fun filled and educative evening with lots of excitement and bonding, writes Roshan Choudhury.

Storytelling is an art and creating stories can be both great fun and a challenge...Bundle both storytelling and story writing together and what we have is complete unadulterated fun.

Children from 5 to 12 years spent 2 hours of the sultry Saturday evening of June 3rd, enjoying this super combo. Brilliant storyteller Kavita Gupta set the tone of the fun filled evening with fun-filled ice breaker games. Children who didn't know each other were now giggling together. The 'toe to toe' and 'elbow to elbow' game certainly got the children to see eye to eye and together they started "cooking up a story".

Our ace storyteller Kavita, introduced the ingredients or structure of a story by asking children what they thought went into a story. Enthusiastic shouts of "sand", "beaches", "grass", " islands", "mountains", "valleys" brilliantly showcased the fantastic imaginations our children have and thus introduced the importance of location in the story. Our budding writers came up with other important ingredients in a story: characters, costumes, the beginning, the end. Kavita went on to introduce the children to pyramid of a story which includes a beginning, middle and an end and told how the pyramid can be used to build the story. She highlighted how our 5 senses played a key role in a story...How we can imagine hearing the rustling of leaves in the wind and the gushing of water...through the written word.

Kavita then started the story of "The rainbow fish". Before the start of the workshop I had the opportunity of talking to our ace storyteller teller and she shared that in "today's world we don't impose morals" on children, rather it is elicited from them. Thus she had chosen the story of the "The rainbow fish" to bring across the importance of "sharing" in our lives.

Each child got to be a part of the fishy story...Where the beautiful rainbow fish learnt the happiness of sharing her beautiful glittery scales... Kavita, as the beautiful rainbow fish, shared her glittery star stickers 'scales' with all the avid listeners present. The eagerness with which all the children lined up to receive the glittery stickers showcased how they all agreed with the moral and were ready to share to bring happiness.

Next they sat down with their papers and used their imaginations to draw their favourite scene from the rainbow fish.

Little Jaden was the first to come up and show the picture he drew from the inspiring story. He got a loud cheer and applause from all his little friends. It was wonderful to have Jaden back after being sick and on bedrest for last two months with typhoid. One by one all the children lined up to show their drawings of their favourite scene from the story of the rainbow fish.

Next they went on to use their newly acquired story making skills build their own stories on "sharing". Kavita shared important tips of using 'who, what, when, where and why', that will surely help them while writing sentences. Kavita also shared some tips for endings...ending with surprise, question ending, mysterious endings, lessons etc. All our budding writers used the tips to pen ... err pencil down their stories. Rachel was the first to come up and share her own lovely story on sharing.

Too soon the fun-filled 2 hours came to an end and the children went home with their little goody bags shared by the lovely organisers Brinelle and Stella, and their heads buzzing with the stories they are going to write.