Early Childhood Workshops

Morgan’s storytelling and oral literature workshops are available to Early Childhood Educators, Children's Librarians, Parents and Carers in Australia and Overseas. They are tailored to suit your specific professional development preferences or literacy advocacy objectives.

Each workshop includes downloadable resources for participants. Additionally workshops with a musical focus also include a CD. All workshops are designed to build up your repertoire of raps, rhymes, songs and stories, and promote specific education, health and/or literacy initiatives.

1. Mouthmovers (rhymes and stories with an environmental, health and body focus)

2. Talkabout (rhymes written in collaboration with a Speech Pathologist suitable for general populations of young children, but with additional information about speech and language development)

3. Chinny Chin Chin (promotion of multi-literacy storytimes, with rhymes that promote oracy and visual literacy)

4. Feast (retellings of folktales about food with accompanying craft and cooking activities, promoting healthy eating and safe and simple food preparation).

5. Stories for Everyone: Designing age, cultural and thematically appropriate programmes for preschool storytimes, school holiday activities and family events. Exploring story selection and presentation, with demonstrations of visual, oral and musical storytelling content that can be learnt, adapted and incorporated into library and community children's programmes.

6. Storytime for Well-Being: Promoting stories of peace, tolerance and harmony through the oral presentation of folktales. This workshop includes a guided meditation and dramatic presentations of folktales.

7. Peepbo: Songs and rhymes for babies. Suitable for Baby Bounce presenters, playgroup leaders and parents and carers of babies aged 0-2.

The structure of each workshop includes a framework outlining the importance of regular storytimes or oral literature programmes for the development of literacy and social skills in young children, with a focus on how early childhood educators can achieve the best outcomes with their presentations. Selected material from the resources is demonstrated and shown how it can be adapted to suit individual programmes. Workshops are for 2-3 hours with a maximum of thirty participants. Free followup via email is available on issues pertaining to the workshop material.

Outcomes:

Participants will be familiar with language arts as an effective scaffold for educational outcomes, developing self esteem and health promotion
Participants will learn new rhymes, songs and/or stories and a framework for presenting them
Participants will explore their own style of oral presentation and the use of musical and/or dramatic props to use in presentation
Participants will be given information on the integration of oral literature resources into their existing programmes and the development of new initiatives

I really enjoyed the workshop. There was such a great buzz in the room and lots of captivated participants. I loved the way you got people using and challenging their learning style to remember the story. Having us then tell stories to each other really got us thinking and talking about how we connect to stories, subjects and characters and how that integrates with our experiences. You present in a very natural unpretentious way and are not afraid to show who you are and your style naturally encourages others to do so. The books are a fabulous resource, I'm ready and rearing to include lots of new material in my Mother Goose and early intervention programs, and in my consult visits to Kinders and childcare.