A return visit after four years but there were quite a number of children who remembered me (or Patrick, who is famous for stealing the limelight!) I saw all the children from the Tiny Tots aged 2-3 all the way up to Year 6 in two exciting days. Thank you so much, Suzy Carter, for all your input and help and thank you teachers for your very generous feedback! More of that in a separate post.
LANTAU INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL
A return visit to Cheung Sha and Tong Fuk. Lots of hilarity fun and games. These smaller schools are always such a pleasure to visit; everyone knows everyone else and the children are full of vim, vigour and vitality. Mischief at the Waterhole produced lots of smiles and laughter.
CHINA
…a first for me! I met Chrissy Erwin in Chiang Mai a couple of years ago. When she moved to Guangzhou she invited me to visit UGIS. Sorting out the paperwork was far easier than I anticipated and the visit was a great experience. Patrick and the crew made hundreds of new friends (and learned a few words of Mandarin into the bargain!)
Everywhere I go the children are lively, vivacious and lots of fun. China was absolutely the same and we had a really successful and enjoyable time.
Huge thanks go to the Erwin family for having me to stay. This totally eliminated the anxiety of how to get around a city with barely a word of any appropriate language!
A lovely thank you note from Head of Primary
St CLARE’S
This visit was another ‘first’. 300 children Year 1 to Year 3 for an hour’s storytelling! I was just a tad apprehensive but everything went brilliantly and the girls were bright, lively and lots of fun.
St CLARE’S PTA
We had a full house of parents and children for ‘The Art of Storytelling.’ This comprised a PowerPoint presentation with tips on making storytelling a lively, exciting and rewarding experience. We worked both with and without books and pictures and had lots of demonstrations. The parents were wonderful, joined in with great enthusiasm, were most appreciative and really found their five to eight year–old selves during the story sessions. I think you created the best storm ever during the swallows migration section of ‘Patrick’s Birthday Message.’
It started with a really enthusiastic and friendly welcome. I felt like a famous celebrity with children calling out from everywhere,“Hello Gailclarke!” (all one word!)
We enjoyed five fun-filled, action-packed days of presentations covering a wide variety of themes:-
I was delighted with the interest, and lively participation of all the children in the Primary department aged five to eleven and amazed by their knowledge and awareness of global concerns, as well as their understanding that we all need to do something about it! The safety of our planet could not be in better hands than those of all our Patana Planet Guardians.
The Early Years (two to four-year-olds) were a joy! They participated in the Parrot Dance, listened to the story and chatted to the puppets.
A HUGE ‘Thank you’ to
Patrick, Cosmos, Chameleon and the crew are beyond excited about our upcoming trip to Bangkok next week — 15-19 January. We’re really happy to be seeing our old friends from last year and making lots of new ones of all ages in the Primary section of Bangkok Patana School.
There will be five fun-filled, action-packed days with lots of topics to look at: beaches, toys, rain forests, elephants, rhyming, writing and illustrating stories and making books.
The storybook friends have already packed their bags even though there’s a whole week to go!
Here’s a photo from my trip to Patana in 2017
See you soon, Patana.
When Alessa was five, she listened to my book ‘Searching for Skye’ and asked her dad to teach her to read, ” because I really love the sound of the words.” Not an easy choice with words like ‘destination’ ‘migration’ and ‘mischievous’! But she succeeded and went on to make You Tube recordings of all my stories. We met Alessa, now six, and her lovely Dad for cold drinks and treats in Central Festival in Phuket. It was a huge pleasure!
Here’s her email and link:
My name is Alessa Ferrah, I thought I would share my you tube channel link’s and videos reading some of my favourite storybooks written by you which I enjoy so much . I hope you will enjoy my reading and please give it a thumb up if you like it and keep writing a great stories like ‘Searching for Skye’. Thank you so much. And have a nice day.
‘Ellie’s Birthday Message’ written, illustrated and performed by 6 year olds at Brighton College Bangkok and based on a story we know well!
Congratulations to Year 2 and their teacher Nicola Wingfield for their brilliant and entertaining performance – all put together on Day 1!! FABULOUS!
Click on the photo to see the video!
A fabulous, fun–filled, action–packed three days of storytelling, book sharing and writing workshops. Patrick, the puppets and I all had a wonderful time. A huge thank you to Nick Goligher for his wonderful organisation, the enthusiastic and welcoming staff, and the children who were delightful, fun and very creative. Miss Art did an amazing job of decorating the library and Pia’s innovative ideas and creativity added an extra dimension to the children’s books. Everyone worked with tremendous energy and every child produced an original animal adventure story with illustrations – in one week! Even the tiny tots drew and coloured some marvellous parrot pictures, enjoyed some puppet fun and performed the parrot dance You should all be very proud of yourselves, well done! Watch Year 2’s You Tube – it’s a treat!
I had no idea how this was going to turn out but I’m really happy with the result.
