Making
a Feltboard Story for Tots
by
Margaret Blachly
Whenever
we get out the feltboard at circletime in our 3’s classroom, the
children cheer, “A feltboard story! Yay!” The feltboard stories
we tell are fairy tales or popular children’s books adapted for
a feltboard. Besides being fun to tell and listen to, feltboard
stories encourage emergent literacy skills in the children, like
story sequencing, repetition and plot prediction, word patterns
and vocabulary.
However, early on in the school year, the teachers in our classroom
came to a troubling realization: this favorite group activity
did not always support our inclusive, anti-bias curriculum. One
day last fall, the class was listening to an all-time favorite,
“Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” The teacher was having fun dramatizing
the story based on the colorful paper cutouts on the feltboard.
“The daddy bear was a BIG, TALL bear with a loooow voice,” she
narrated in a low voice. “The mama bear was soft and plump, and
she loved sitting on her cushiony pink chair,” she spoke in a
sugary voice. “And they had a little baby boy.”
As raptly attentive as the children were, it was apparent that
something wasn’t right: the gender stereotypes that the original
tale perpetuated were out of date. Looking at the children, we
saw children whose families had a mommy, but not a daddy, families
with a mommy and a grandparent, two mommies, brothers and sisters.
The families in our classroom were a beautiful example of diversity,
but this story was encouraging the very stereotypes that an anti-bias
curriculum strives to dissolve.
Now we have made a new version of the Goldilocks story. Our set
contains two adult bears and two child-size bears, four beds,
chairs and bowls, and two children with different skin tones.
All of the figures are gender-neutral. With the four bears, we
can create family structures that represent every family in the
class.
The first time we told “Goldilocks” using our new set, the teacher
told the children they were going to hear a “new old story.” Everything
about the narration was the same except that the bear family had
only a baby bear and a mommy bear. “What about the daddy bear?”
demanded the children. The teacher explained that this bear family
had only a baby bear and a mommy bear, and that was the family.
We had already discussed how different teachers tell the same
story in different ways. This was just a different way to tell
“Goldilocks.” The children accepted this and listened happily
to the story.
The next week we told the story with two mommy bears. This time
the children were not surprised; rather, they looked around at
their peers and said , “Oh yeah, just like some of us have two
mommies in our family!” They now look forward to the variations.
We even sometimes make Goldilocks a boy. Now the children tell
each other the feltboard stories, often choosing bears that represent
their own families, or the family of one of their peers. It is
still one of the most popular stories we tell, but now the assumption
that children gain from the subtext is that families can be many
different ways, and that all families are valued in our classroom.
New adaptations of familiar stories have revolutionized storytelling
in our classroom, and have opened the doors to discussions and
revelations that foster acceptance and celebration of diversity.
Materials
for making a feltboard story:
•
feltboard (can be purchased or made by covering a large piece
of wood or cardboard with felt)
•
a favorite story
•
felt or paper cutout representing the characters and objects in
the story. Illustrations in books can be color-copied and laminated,
with a small piece of felt glued to the back to stick it to the
feltboard.
Ms.
Blachly is a 3’s teacher at Bank Street’s Family Center.
Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel:
(212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2001.
|