Songs and Stories: Reception Class

I was invited by St Mary’s Fields Primary School in 2009, where I had worked a few times before, to work with story-teller Chris Corps and the teachers and children of the reception class to develop songs and stories together with both reception classes (numbering 57) using outdoor and indoor spaces and ideas. The project named ‘What If?’ was about imaginative learning and was also to support practitioners by modelling ideas and trying out new unexplored ideas either of our own or those instigated by children’s responses to provocations we used. This was also about allowing the project to take a child-directed path with us responding to children’s ideas and needs.

We had six days on the same day each week and some reflection time after each day when everyone discussed what had happened and I wrote a log noting down everyone’s ideas, suggestions and observations as well as what preparations we needed, which I then emailed to everyone soon after.

Each session had a different provocation and we started by using large rolls of brown paper with 60 rolls of masking tape outside. This provoked many interesting responses including the making of dens, the wrapping of large structures, dressing-up and role-play, mark-making, 3D sculpting and many others. This then led to a ‘story-bundle’ and songs which Chris collected while children were exploring.

Another session was based on ‘black and white’ where all provocations offered were these colours – i.e. using black and white paint, black and white fabric and clothing for dressing-up, an overhead projector with black shapes and objects projected onto a white sheet, black and white objects to manipulate into land-art, an old telephone, black and white photos of themselves cut into eyes, noses and mouths to put together in different ways, black and white paper to cut out and arrange. Again – children explored these which led to songs and stories shared at the end of the day.

Another session was based around making potions outdoors using liquids, natural resources from outside such as leaves and herbs, colouring, glitter and other materials which the children mixed together, explored and discussed – leading to many stories and songs.

Some of the music happened in between the ‘working’ times which often happens. This song was created during a break when children came over to me and picked up a long trumpet I had brought in and from that, this song was invented by the children and I joined with the banjo…

It’s interesting to me that some people would not encourage this song to happen because it’s about a man who has no clothes but so often we tend to see things from our point of view. The children thought it was funny and they enjoyed deciding what other item the man wasn’t wearing e.g. glasses, beard, face.

Some children spontaneously composed songs and stories once they saw the possibilities open to them…

Some songs and stories were made because children had ideas which they realised could be transformed…

And this is part of just one story-writing song with instruments which lasted nearly 8 minutes. The children are interjecting with story ideas and then singing them…

Some children started speaking because of the emphasis on making stories and singing songs – here is a child who had difficulty speaking but enjoyed speaking and being listened to…

Chris inspired the children by sitting in front of them, making eye contact and engaging them with a made-up story with ideas from them after experimenting with the materials such as the brown paper.

This child had Spanish as a first language and enjoyed saying the words of the story – she was very intuitive about the phrasing and words she used and you can hear her relishing the sound of the words…

This song was made completely intuitively by this child who was known for being rather reticent and non-verbal – as a result of the whole class starting some words together she came outside and joined a small group of children around me and my banjo. The song started with all the children together ‘The sun was so big and the grass was so tall…’

This child then continued with it outside phrase after phrase containing completely coherent sentences and incredibly musical phrasing – if you listen carefully you’ll hear her ‘catch up’ with the beat and elongate the phrasing to fit the musical backing I was providing…

She was then able to perform this song to the class later on. And here it is with the whole class:

Often children find it easier to sing words than say them and many children who find it difficult to be verbal can find it easy to sing their words. I have also found that children (and people in general) find it easier to involve themselves when they are offered activities outdoors. Somehow the space seems to give people more confidence to express themselves.