The Story Spinner also offers interactive half-day and whole-day workshops, led by experienced professionals, to help you make the most of this exciting resource in your school. As well as exploring the links with key National Strategy materials, the session will also focus on using the stories to develop children’s writing and to provide evidence to support periodic assessment.
Story notes for Year 2 by Phil McDermott
This collection of stories on DVD, provide rich content for use with Year 2 children. The units listed beside each story are simply guides on how they can be used with the Narrative Units of the Renewed Framework.
Sleeping Beauty. Units 1,2
Through the curse of a witch, a princess and all the inhabitants of a castle are put to sleep for a hundred years. When a thorn forest grows around them they are lost to memory. Until one day…
Both the Germans and the French lay claim to this beautiful tale of the sleeping princess. In countryside’s littered with ancient barrows and strongholds, speculation about times past and the passing of time itself has led to making of many enchantment stories. It is interesting here that it is not the kiss which wakes Sleeping Beauty but the centenary of the spell. A fascination with time is a strong leitmotif in this tale. Although the story may be familiar to many adults it would be wrong to assume that modern children have ever heard or seen any of the traditional fairytales.
The Tin Soldier. Units 1,2
Of all his birthday gifts the boy is most pleased with his disabled tin soldier, but at night when the toys come alive, the soldier is the object of jealousy from the wicked jack-in-the-box over his love for the ballerina. After many adventures the soldier proves his courage and love by the ultimate sacrifice.
This beautiful tale by one of Europe’s finest storytellers, Hans Christian Andersen, is about courage and how true nobility can be earned. Originally ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’, Andersen effortlessly creates a world of animated toys and perilous journeys through the then quite new and mysterious urban landscape. Children have an innate sense of honour acknowledged and celebrated in this story along with their suspicion that underneath the bricks and inside the cupboards exist worlds varied and wonderful.
Little Red Riding Hood. Units 1,2
The little girl’s grandmother is sick, so she has to go through the woods to bring her some food and medicine. In the wood she meets a wolf and escapes from him. But the wolf knows a short cut to grandmother’s cottage and lays in wait for the girl.
Although popularised in print by Perrault and then the brothers Grimm, the antecedents of this tale are very much older. More than any other traditional story, this tale has been analysed and reflected upon with conclusions reached concerning female sexuality, stranger danger, werewolves and straying from the path. For the Storyspinner however, the story works just as well taken at face value and has survived centuries because of its memorable images; the cottage in the forest, skipping along a path and a red hood in a dark wood.
Rapunzel. Units 1,2
A girl is taken by a witch and put into a tower. Everyday she pulls the witch to the top by her hair. A prince comes to rescue her but is ambushed by the witch and is blinded. Only if he can find the girl again can his sight be restored.
Once again a story of a bargain made without real consideration of the consequences. The central device in the story is good strong hair, which is prerequisite for fairytale princesses but is here put to practical purposes. Although her methods are extreme, the witch’s desire for companionship seems understandable and should play a part in any consideration of the story. After all the European persecution of vulnerable old women for a millennium by extreme violence was abetted by stories like this.
Girl and the Ribbons. Units 1,2
On the way to get the doctor for her sick mother, a girl spots a leprechaun. He promises her a crock of gold. But a leprechaun is a trickster, and the girl finds out that although he has kept his promise, she will never find his gold. However, by the wisdom of her mother and by hard work she gets what she wants in the end.
Leprechauns are not jolly pipe smoking charmers but direct descendants of the gods of Irish mythology forced underground by the coming of Christianity. Defeated and emasculated they kept only small magic and the trickster characteristic of their former omnipotence. They have their equivalents in other culture stories from the Basin Indians of the mid western United States to Norse mythology. The Storyspinner’s mother used to claim that she was the girl in the story. He believes that indeed this is the case.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Units 1,2
When the Town of Hamelin is over run by a plague of rats, the adults and the mayor try everything to get rid of them. Only when the strange Pied Piper arrives do they dare to hope. When he has completed his task however, and the rats have gone, the penny-pinching adults turn on him, refuse to pay him and run him out of town. Insulted and abused he decides to take his payment in something more precious than money.
It is said that this tale has its origins in the Thirty Years War when the starving adults of a settlement ate infected wheat, become delusional and killed children they believed to be rats. The present day town of Hamelin are very proud of their association with this disturbing story and ironically make a lot of money from the tourism it has encouraged.