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Herding Bubbles Selections:

(1) A basement, a cat and some treasure (approx. 30 minutes). As adults attempt to tell children some stories (from Twenty Tellable Tales: Audience Participation Folktales for the Beginning Storyteller, by Margaret Read MacDonald. Published by American Library Association), the conversation veers off in different directions. Each time it does, we give our listeners a chance to move to music.

(2) "And never do that again, tree." (approx. 30 minutes). These are stories that we have collected from young children over the years. Here they are read by an adult, in a soothing voice. Let the children listen to them while they are settling down for a nap. After naptime, see if your children have stories to tell. We recommend that storytelling be followed by "storyacting." And if you're not sure what we mean by that, please visit our Vivian Paley page.

(3) Bubbles to dream by (approx. 15 minutes). More bubbles, this time set to music. Relaxation guaranteed.

*What's with all the bubbles? One day some children we were filming were not allowed to play in the grass, because it was full of puddles. They were given bottles of bubble solution and wands to play with and as we filmed, their bubbles landed on the puddles and we collected some amazing footage -- and a new way to think about working with children. If you keep your ears and eyes open for the unexpected, sometimes you may hear or see six impossible things before breakfast.

• Links We Like

Videatives offers college professors and teacher educators a long list of on-demand digital video-with-text to enhance their lectures, workshops, and online courses on early education and child development.

• To visit a blog devoted to Children's Literature, take a short trip to Australia.

• For some mentoring ideas, read about the Mentor Project by clicking here.
  

• For some thoughts on young children and the arts, take a look at the article, Sometimes a Smudge is Just a Smudge and Sometimes it's a Saber-toothed Tiger.