Tell me a Story

Alannah and I have a 'play' session in the early morning, from about 7 o'clock. Play needs to be defined as broadly as possible, of course. She has her hot-cross bun and babychino. I have a hot-cross bun and purple Nespresso. We invariably start with a book. Today it was "Spot's Birthday Party", which we read for the letter shapes, and spaces, and punctuation, and font differences. Well, there is no content, so what else to do with it. Today, we followed that book with "Tyrannosaurus Drip" by Julia Donaldson, who also authored "Room on a Broom", and "The Gruffalo". There are some books where Alannah knows she really, really needs "Buddy" with her. This be one such book. I will do a review of this book before it goes back to the library next Tuesday.

These two are Annabel, and Eleanor whose Mummy is French.

When I was a youngster, we had a phonograph given to us when my father's brother went to England. Athol also gave us a box of 78 rpm records in brown paper covers. One of the records had a blue label proudly trumpeting "Tell Me A Story" by Frankie Laine Tell me story, tell me story Tell me story, remember what you said You promised me you said you would You got to give in so I'll be good Tell me a story, then I'll go to bed. This is just what Alannah says for our next play segment, "tell me a story". She has a bunch of animal finger puppets, that I weave a story around, increasingly cajoling her to contribute, both voices AND story ideas. It can go on for half-an-hour. I am told that the stories are reproduced, or extended, using Lego people in the bath!

This morning, she and her "friends" went down to Willoughby Park to ride their scooters around the bike track, but instead climbed to the top of the climbing frame using their fairy-wings. One, other story involved Alannah (she is invariably the protagonist), skipping down the lane from her cottage to the village to buy things for her mother, who stayed home. She had to buy things from the baker, the butcher, the greengrocer, the candlestick-maker, the cobbler, the grocery-store, the pet-store, the toy-shop, and the florist. There has to be 9 other characters, as we have 11 puppets, and two are reserved for Alannah, and Mummy-Kirsten. And here they be: Mummy-Kirsten, and Alannah-Rabbit.