Traditional Storytelling in Early Childhood Education

Is there a technique for storytelling? How important is it? What is the difference between reading and telling stories? How can a storyteller hold children’s attention?
Taking the act of playing as an integrated language of knowledge in early childhood, Cristiane Velasco embeds the art of telling and listening to stories in such language and incorporates stories told to and then played out by children. The author also writes about the three different roles of a storyteller: the traditional storyteller, the professional storyteller, and the educator storyteller.
There are excerpts, the “logbook”, throughout the book relating what’s presented with the author’s real life experiences gathered throughout her professional life which, in turn, grants credibility to the book and make it a true guide for those who work in children’s education.

Highlights:
• Traditional and the wonderful tales: origins, variants, and oral history
• Verbal Stories and Book Stories: The Differences Between Reading and telling a story
• Played out stories and make believe in a child’s imagination
• Fear, death and life in stories for children
• Learning to tell stories in the classroom
• Theater space and stage elements, tale approximation exercises
• How to select a repertoire of short stories to work in the classroom

Cristiane Velasco is an educator and storyteller with an undergraduate degree in fine arts from Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP) and specialization in art education from School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP). She’s worked for 12 years with children’s education at Casa Redonda Centro de Estudos where she is a member of the teaching staff for “The Educators’ Training Meeting” and “Corpo de Criança”. Cristiane tells stories for kids in early childhood in weekly meetings at the Ciranda School. Since 2003, she has been working in trainings at Instituto Brincante.