As an Education major, I've had many experiences that have improved my planning abilities. My participation in Storytelling Hour at the Wood County Public Library is an excellent example of
planning skill experience, from deciding on a theme as a group, to planning our objectives, and
finally, organizing materials and conducting a successful evening for the children.
We formed our Children's Literature class into groups of four, and each group planned stories,
activities, and a snack for the children. My group met after class to decide on a theme and discuss
the details of the evening. We decided to use colors as a theme, and we also included the theme of
cats, to make the stories more fun and appropriate for all ages. For our first story, we told the
children about "The Three Little Kittens", and enacted parts of it with puppets . They seemed to
enjoy the story, but they really loved the cat and mouse puppets. After that story, we read "Cat's
Colors" and everyone had a chance to share their favorite colors, or the colors of their pet(s).
Following the stories, the children were given materials to make colorful cat puppets of their own.
After each child was armed with a puppet, we then had the children play the role of the "millions of
cats" from the tale "Millions of Cats". Finally, for a snack, we served them multi-colored Juicy Juice
boxes and colored goldfish (Pepperidge Farm crackers.)
(What else would you feed "millions of cats?")