Folktales and Lessons Learned

On our second day of library camp, we focused on folktales. First, one of the librarians told a local folktales called La Llorona, also called "The Whispering Woman." This scary folktale serves a lesson to teach children not to travel alone at night or to venture near water alone. The kids loved the story and they told their own versions of it that had been told to them by parents or grandparents. I was surprised at how many variations they knew about the folktale.

 

After that, we had children write their own folktale. They could write it out in sentences, jot down ideas about their story, or draw it in pictures.  We took about 30 minutes to allow students to work on their folktales, focusing on the lesson that they wanted children to learn from their story. We were all so impressed with the stories they created. Even the student who drew pictures instead of writing words told an elaborate tale. 

 After each student shared their folktale, it was craft time! Today we made "shak shaks," also known as maracas. We read a story, In the Land of the Shak Shak Tree. Each time we came across a shak shak tree in the story, everybody shook their shak shaks. We had a ball doing this. 

After a short break, we read one-on-one. The boy, Thomas, that I worked with yesterday during reading time, came up to me, and wanted help re-reading two of the books from yesterday. This time, he recognized more of the words in the story, which was awesome! He told me that he had told his mom all about one of the books when he got home last night, and when she came to pick him up today, he brought her over the table to show her the book.  This made my day, as I felt I had accomplished just want I came to do-- spark excitement about reading.