Two grandmothers have produced a reading package that brings children’s favourite stories to life. Martin Whittaker reports.
A Welsh grandmother has turned stories she recorded for her own grandchildren into an educational resource for the home and school. Valerie Wood-Gaiger, a former charity worker who lives in the village of Myddfai, in the Brecon Beacons National Park, had the idea for Grandma’s Stories after she sent videos of herself telling stories to her grandchildren in New York. She and fellow grandmother Carroll Nunnerley, who worked for an educational toys’ company, then began developing the idea two years ago after they were both made redundant.
Grandma’s Stories, available on video or DVD, features Mrs Wood-Gaiger reading tales from her home. The pack includes two stories from the Welsh curriculum - “Woolly Wendy and the Snowdon Lily” and “I Saw A Ship A-Sailing”, both by Sian Lewis. An education pack includes two storybooks with vocabulary lists, language skills projects, topics for discussion and suggestions for activities.
The package is designed to encourage children aged four to seven to read in the classroom or at home. It can also be used with those learning English as a second language. But what do children get from the videos that they cannot get from an adult reading to them?
“They get the visual image,” says Valerie. “The video starts off in my village and we see my dog and my chickens before I go indoors to read the story.
“Afterwards, we bring the story to life by going to see the things we have talked about.
“The advantage of a video especially for those children who have it at home, is that they can play it over and over again until they have fully understood.”
Debra Davies, an infants teacher at Ysgol Rhys-Prichard in Llandovery, Carmarthenshire, has used the video with her class, and she has been impressed by the response.
“It was brilliant - the children loved it,” she says. “At the end, there’s a little recap of the story and she goes on the train up to the top of Snowdon, so we used it for geography as well.”
The Grandma’s Stories video costs pound;12.99 and the education pack, which includes the video or DVD plus additional resources, costs pound;23.50. New resources in the pipeline include a video of the Nativity story, “Hansel and Gretel” and “Dick Whittington”.
See www.grannystories.com for more information.
