Here at My Kind of Book we are busy organising the first ever Accessible Book and Story Festival which will take place in September 2024. The focus of the festival will be sensory stories – and this has sent us ‘back to basics’ to consider the fundamentals of sensory stories. In this, the first of three blog posts about sensory stories we consider the sensory props…
There are few tasks more fun than assembling the props for a new multi-sensory story! Here is the process we go through at My Kind of Book when we are working on a new story:
First we ask ourselves what we are trying to express with the sensory prop. We need to make choices here as we do not want to have too many props in our story and yet we cannot express all the different aspects of a character, concept or plot twist with just one prop. We need to choose the most important aspect that we wish to communicate. In fact the thing we need to express may not actually be the usual meaning of the word at all. For example in Little Red Riding Hood the most important thing about the wolf is not his ‘wolfishness’. (It is perfectly possible to understand the story without knowing what a wolf is.) The most important thing we need to understand about the wolf is that he is fierce and bad.
A soft toy wolf might say ‘wolf’ to us but in this context it might not help a child with complex additional needs very much. Instead we could act out the role of the wolf, perhaps using some big furry mitts to show our ‘otherness’ and gently and playfully ‘catch’ the children (if our story group children enjoy this kind of thing – if not we can always ‘catch’ the other adults in the room). Through repetition of this the children would come to understand the most important aspect of the wolf in this story: badness!
Secondly we think about what part the prop plays in the structure of the story. Is the prop an invitation to join the story, the turning point of the story, or a calming object that appears at the resolution of the story? Generally the climax of a story should also be the most ‘impressive’ from a sensory point of view. This will help the child to experience the shape of the story.
For example in the classic picture book story Peace At Last by Jill Murphy the high point of the story is when Papa Bear is in the car. At this point we might use many different bird noises and some large yellow silk cloths for the sunshine so that the child can really feel that they are at the turning point of the story. (For more notes on how to create a sensory version of this book follow this link.)
The third thing we think about is how we can use the props to allow a child who does not use much or any spoken or signed language to take more of a part in the ‘conversation’ of the story. (We will be writing more about this ‘conversation’ in a later blog post.) With careful thought and experimentation props can be chosen that allow everyone to join in. Children can thump a squeaker to ‘be’ a mouse, shake a bell bracelet to ‘be’ Santa or use a head switch to roar like a lion…and so our story conversation is ready to start!
See also: The Wonders of Sensory Storytelling Part 2: The Stories
And: The Wonders of Sensory Storytelling Part 3: Telling The Stories
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