Our Storytelling and Mask Making Manuals are Here.
Are you looking for engaging, play-based learning activities to keep children entertained and stimulated? Our manuals provide guidance for storytelling and mask-making activities. We offer them free to NGOs, schools, and community groups. These activities are designed to encourage creativity, imagination, and social interaction among children. And to preserve local culture.
Storytelling
Children creating stories is a way to live in a world of imagination—and it requires no materials!
CPI encourages this as a social activity through Storytelling Circles and storytelling events, and sessions. These ways of learning, and bringing the community together, are rarely part of a school curriculum.
Because the manuals are based on CPI’s on-the-ground, hands-on experience, we have successfully placed the programs in schools in several countries! It’s one of the ways we are helping children around the world to experience the benefit of play. Experts in the field of storytelling – Prof. Caroline Beauregard and Dr. Jean-Elie Gilles have weighed in. CPI also considered the feedback of teachers, parents, community leaders, and kids themselves, when creating the manuals.
CPI’s Storytelling and Mask-Making Manuals
The storytelling and mask making manuals are easy to follow and can be adapted to any organization’s specific needs. The manuals provide detailed roadmaps for teachers to engage children in the art of storytelling and mask-making. These activities are affordable and they will hold the children’s interest, impart new skills, and enhance self-esteem. Storytelling also increases children’s interest in local culture, as we have discovered in Haiti.
Storytelling is play-based learning at its best! Above all, these manuals help promote interaction among children, and the ability to share in the joy of being creative.
We work with Susan Linn, the renowned expert on child development, to create a manual on how to make sock puppets and use them in telling stories. Link to our interview with Susan Linn here.
Mask Making
Masks and mask making provide ways for children to explore their personal identities and create new ones!
From Kenya to Sri Lanka to Haiti, children attending our workshops reveled in the joy that came from expressing themselves through the mask-making process during our play events.
What NPR Says About Storytelling
Listening to a story transports us mentally to another time and place.
As you hear a story unfold, your brain waves actually start to synchronize with those of the storyteller, says Uri Hasson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University.
Could CPI’s Storytelling or Mask-Making Program Be Something For You?
Are you interested in learning more about the manuals, and how to obtain them, please contact CPI. We would be happy to share them with anyone, provided we receive credit when the manuals are used.
