Fireside stories

Don’t forget to download the Interactive resource, ‘The Winter Cabin’ – an interactive ‘book’ featuring the story ‘The Winter Cabin – a Story for the First Snowfall’. This story appears in Fireside Stories: Tales for a Winter’s Eve by Caitlín Matthews and Helen Cann (Barefoot Books, HB £14.99).

As winter’s icy blanket begins to wrap itself around us, we seek the warmth of shelter and the comfort of togetherness. And, your classroom can provide both. The winter season is the perfect time of year to come together as a class and experience the comfort of storytelling with the cold, misty mornings or long, dark afternoons creating a perfect back drop for telling winter-themed stories. Different countries and cultures around the world have their own traditional winter stories that evoke the season’s character – often passed on from one generation to the next by the comfort and warmth of the fireside. Surrounded by the cosiness of your own classroom, telling a story such as ‘The Winter Cabin – a Story for the First Snowfall’ (from a collection of stories in Fireside Stories: Tales for a Winter’s Eve by Caitlín Matthews and Helen Cann – Barefoot Books, HB £14.99), will capture the harsh, barren reality of winter in a fictional context. The story relays how, as the first snow falls, a group of brave Russian animals guard their winter cabin against a ravenous wolf. Read it together as a class using the interactive version of the story.