The Power of Story Telling

We revisited the story of Pandora's Box at the start of the week.  We dove deeper into the ideas that were present in the box:  Hope and Despair.  I invited the children to think about what would be inside of Pandora's box in present time.  Their conversation dove deeper into ideas to include destruction, pain, torture, and even death.  On the flip side, they also discussed further the idea of persevering through troubled times with kindness and joy.

The children were then invited to create with a medium of their choice, a representation of hope and despair to put in our Pandora's box.  There was a wide variety of symbolism from a paper swarm of mosquitos bringing evil to the world to a three dimensional pony made out of cardboard to ride for joy.

The children's energy and curiosity continues to circle back around to mythology.  I asked them why do they think these myths and other such stories have been around for all of this time and why do we still continue to talk about them?  Their ideas included:

-simply for our love of reading
-people like to imagine stuff
-so we don't forget about the past
-passed down to give people knowledge
-for bedtime stories
-so we know stories about people like Mansa Musa 
-to explain things like Christianity does
-they found the stories interesting

After this discussion, we watched King Midas and the Golden Touch and King Midas and the Donkey Ears while pondering  why are these stories still around centuries later.

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I recorded the children's responses about each of the King Midas myths we heard as well as revisited Pandora's Box.

The children believed that Pandora's Box was created to "explain why bad things happen to Greek humans and other mortals."

King Midas and the Golden Touch was passed on so people are not "so caught up in the things you (we) want or you (we) might lose everything you (we) love."  The children dove deeper and shared that it is to explain that "bad things happen when you (people) are greedy or want too much stuff."

​As for King Midas and the Donkey Ears, their ideas included to teach others "not to argue with the Gods; play for fun and not be so competitive; don't insult the Gods; you shouldn't be a sore loser;  and don't be revengeful."

As we dive deeper into the power and the art of stories, I can't help but wonder what family stories the children might know that have been passed on from generation to generation; what other mythological stories do they know from the Greeks or from other cultures; what stories will they pass on to the next generation of second graders; and why are stories important to religion (as this has been brought up by the children with regards to the Bible). I have so many wonderings where this will all lead!