On Saturday February 8th, the Berkeley-Carroll School celebrated it's 15th Annual Storytelling Festival! Featured storytellers Jim Hawkins and Elizabeth Luscombe told stories from Ireland and Cuba, highlighting the global art of storytelling.
Kids and their families and friends gathered in the Middle/Upper School Library for some morning snacks and storytelling activities. There were three activity stations that got kids involved in various parts of storytelling.
At the "Build-A-Story" station, kids made their own stories by gluing and pasting cut outs onto folded paper accordion books. They were encouraged to be creative and use their imaginations.
The "Draw Your Own Story" station had a blank worksheets with various story prompts for kids to draw and color in.
And the "Fill In the Blank Stories" section had print outs of stories with some blanks for participants to fill in with their own words, kind of like Mad Libs! The results were original and often silly.
After activities and snacks, everyone went upstairs to the performance space to hear stories from our featured storytellers. Jim Hawkins is an Irish storyteller and a friend to BCS. He returned this year to tell Irish stories accompanied by song and his bodhrá, an Irish drum.
After some wonderful stories by Mr. Hawkins, Berkeley-Carroll's own Ms. Luscombe told the story of Martina the Beautiful Cockroach, a humorous and touching Cuban story. She was expertly accompanied by some of her 5th grade class who acted out some of the parts of the story.
Jim Hawkins closed the performance with a couple more stories and songs which the audience joined in on. The day was a success and everyone had a wonderful time celebrating the art of storytelling across the world.
