The oral story telling tradition, did not involve books, pictures or props. It involved a story teller and a person’s imagination. It involved just enough intonation and modulation to keep the listener in his own imagination.
As a Waldorf teacher and parent, I have used Rudolf Steiner’s indications on story telling for many years with my students and my child( who hear a story from me everyday)
When I share the story of a young boy with a dog with them, I know each of their dogs is different from my imagination, and so is the little boy, but yet the images run in front of our eyes, just like a movie playing in front of us.
In Mahabharata, when Dhritraashtra was able to see a whole war story through narration, I wonder if this magic is what they were narrating to. The magic of our beautiful minds, capable of weaving its own images, from written or oral text.
No picture books can do justice to our ingenious imagination.
This imaginative power is later critical for problem solving, building a vision..
Let’s develop our children’s imagination!
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