Early Years
The most important sector of the education system?

 Engaging and inspiring staff training and storytelling inputs for children.

We’ve long know the benefits of storytelling for children and storytelling skills for educators and the new Ofsted Inspection framework provides us with an even greater incentive and more opportunities to use storytelling and practical hands-on skills, from cultural capital to literacy, maths to communication and everything in between.
This is how we came to develop our 'Little Lumberjacks' workshops where as well as stories children and staff get to play with real construction tools and make something useful for their classroom.

When you tell a story to a child they have to be able to understand and enjoy it no matter how many layers it has or how complicated the issues or subject matter. Ultimately it is your job as a storyteller to keep the complexity as that is what makes a story so enjoyable, whilst also getting rid of any complication, which often causes confusion. Richard O’Neill

We’d love to work with your nursery and share our unique methods and eco-friendly natural and recycled  resources with you, individual days, longer projects and training for staff.

Many of the new toys and stories that we are creating are inspired by nursery and foundation including; Roly-Yoly, The Blockies, Tree Buddies and our fabulous Dancing Dolls and our new interactive story ‘Halle had a Hammer!’


25th November, 2019
Hi Richard,

Thank you so much for an inspiring, fun and practical day! The children have had an absolute ball (as have the staff) and it was so brilliant to see some of our more reserved children getting fully stuck in and loving every minute! I think that the children are going to be talking about this for weeks to come. I can’t wait to get the children writing about their experiences tomorrow... I will pop some examples on Twitter for you to see.

It really has been a fabulous day and that is all thanks to you!

Thanks again for everything!
Zoe
EYFS Lead Hollins Primary Manchester

 "That was absolutely fantastic, I didn't think it would be as good as that and I have certainly never seen nursery staff engaged like that before. Any training session I've been in with them in  the past they've made no contribution."Thank you very much the storytelling training session this afternoon.
My team and I enjoyed the experience and came away with many fond memories. We shared so many experiences and have learnt new techniques and approaches to story telling which we can use and adapt within our nursery setting. Upon speaking to several members of my team they came away feeling more empowered, confident and enthusiastic.
Please can you convey our sincere thanks to Richard O'Neill for a most enjoyable story telling experience.
regards
Lynne Roberts (Nursery Manager Brookvale)