Story Telling with Massage

Do you ever have days when you walk into a classroom, take one look at the children and you know it's going to be a struggle?



I had a group of kiddies after school this week who were so fidgety and inattentive that I just gave up on my lesson planned around parts of the face and we had a back massage instead!

We were going to be touching parts of our faces, singing a little parts of the face song, playing Simon Says and then consolidate with a few craft activities.

But, as I said, the children were very unreceptive. They couldn't sit still and they couldn't listen. I guess they'd had a long day already, they didn't really need me coming in and teaching them something else.

So, what to do with this class of 3 and 4 year olds? The room we work in doesn't have tables or chairs, the only resources we have are those that I can bring in a large plastic box.

We sat in a circle, one behind the other, caterpillar style and I started singing, Go Away Big Green Monster, from this iTunes app. I don't often buy apps but this one was so good! It has the story as well as a Go Away Big green Monster song. The children were familiar with both the book and the song as we had already studied it.

Anyway I started singing the song and as I did so, I drew the parts of the face on the back of the little girl in front of me using my hands. (I asked permission first):

Can I give you a massage?
Big eyes: two little circles on upper back
Long nose: a long oval shape on middle back
Big mouth: a semi circle on lower back
Sharp teeth: a series of triangles on lower back
Small ears: two oval shapes on sides of middle of the back
Scraggly hair: long strokes using fingertips from top of head and down to the middle of the back.
Big face: a big circle, encompassing all the other parts of the face

We all repeated these relaxing strokes on the person in front. We thanked them and then turned around and massaged the person who was behind us.



Calm was restored......story telling with massage, try it sometime.

Main Communication Aims:

Parts of the face vocabulary: big eyes, long nose, big mouth, sharp teeth, small ears, scraggly hair, big face

Adjective/noun order

This is the book that we had studied along with another great book about using massage with stories.