Fun at Story Storks

So with his big sister at preschool now poor little Leo is stuck with his Mummy all day!

We only have about 3 hours a day when it’s just the two of us but he certainly likes to keep me on my toes during that time. And whoever said “one child is no child” (might be badly translated from German) is lying! One child can definitely feel more like 3 children!

Especially when he is an energetic little 20 month old boy who likes to run around a lot, climb on about everything that he finds inside or outside, always manages to get hold of the stuff that he shouldn’t have (I’m mainly thinking of pens and markers) and needs to be entertained all the time!

This is why we love all of our activities like gymnastics, swimming etc and always love to try and discover new things!

As I was preparing for my kids yoga classes I came across Story Storks which is run by Sarah Cantrill, who I know from one of the local “mums-in-business” groups, and thought that this class is right up our street as it includes movement, music and of course story telling. Part of my final course work for the kids yoga qualification was to observe some movement classes aimed at children and Sarah kindly agreed to help me out so Leo and I went to her classes at the YMCA in Surbiton and Welcare House in Kingston and I have to say we both learned a lot!

Sarah uses stories such as Snow White, Peter Pan or Jason and the Golden Fleece and brings them to life for the little ones. There is a little street-dance-like warm up in the beginning of every class, a musical exercise and then a little intro to the story where kids can do some of the key actions “look really scared”, “have a vision”, “shout stop!”.

If you think this is a relaxing class for parents as the kids are just sitting down and listening to a story then you are absolutely wrong! There is dancing, running around, acting out the story, singing and lots of fun!

Sarah is really fun, loud, enthusiastic and slightly bonkers (which is definitely necessary for the job she does) and absolutely loves what she does! The classes are very creative and you can tell she has put a lot of effort (including writing and recording her own songs) into every single one of them.

The classes we went to were aimed at 2-4 year olds but even though Little Leo is slightly younger he absolutely loved it! He is still too young to understand the story itself but he loved the dancing and singing and he still went through all the emotions of the characters in the stories.

Sarah’s classes, or workshops as she calls them, are for kids from as young as 4 weeks old and they are designed to get kids excited about stories and books from a young age. Sharing stories will help their language development and later their education which means better exam results, great jobs and eventually buying their parents a sports-car!! (proven by he infographic below)! Definitely sold it to me!