Available throughout the academic year, created for Reception, Key stage 1 & 2
Tell Tale Hearts is supporting Artsmark by offering 2 shows for the price of one.
Cost: only £275* for 2 shows/day for schools in the Yorkshire region (just over £2 per child).
Recommended audience capacity: 2 classes or 65 children per show
*NB. Minimal travel expenses will be added if the school is beyond 30 miles from company base.
Trunk Tales – Stimulating the English Curriculum
Journey around the world with our well-travelled friend to share in tales of boastful toads, magical fish and fearsome beasts of the wild woods. Using puppetry and the contents of her magical trunk she will create arabic seas, epic mountains, fields of turnips and the tallest trees.
Children are invited into the performance by creating waves, bartering in the market, helping to find a suitor for the lady mouse, deciding on suitable punishments and even acting out a character or two…
The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.
Brandon Sanderson
Curriculum Links
English: Listening – Maintain attentive listening and give appropiate responses, enabling children to participate fully in offering ideas and suggestions within collaborative conversations.
English: Spoken Language – Playful interaction and role-play activity encourages children to confidently express their ideas and justify their choices within the imagined world of the story.
English: Vocabulary Development – Introduction of new words within the storytelling format where meaning is supported through gesture, context, emotion and repetition.
Numeracy and Mathematics – Encourages quick use of numbers in an imagined market context where the storyteller barters with the children for a good price.
Expressive Arts & Design – children explore new sensations through touch, sound, physical expression and role play, creating their own imaginative responses to the performance and connected experiences.
Learning – Helps young children to achieve their early learning goals and further embeds learning across all of the above curriculum areas for Key Stage 1 & 2.
Quality Principles
Trunk Tales supports the Arts Council’s Quality Principles:
Being authentic – Our storyteller is a professional performer with over 20 years experience of storytelling and working with children.
Being exciting, inspiring and engaging – From the first gribbet of toad to the final reveal of the mouse house in the heart of the mountain – your children will be inspired, excited and engaged from the off.
Ensuring a Positive and Inclusive Experience – All children are drawn into the worlds of the story through expert facilitation which respects the working level of each child.
Actively involving children and young people – The children participate through: creating sound scapes and waves, answering questions, going into role, making moral decisions, bartering at the market and even acting out a character or two for one of the stories.
Useful Booking Information:
Minimum technical requirements – minimum space needed is – 5m x 5 m performance area + space for audience. Set can be cleared to accommodate lunch arrangements.
Use of benches and chairs are helpful in establishing a slight rake effect for better sight lines. We provide mats for children to sit on.
Duration – 55 mins/ 1hour – no interval
Get in time – 1 hour 15 mins
Get out time – 30 minutes
Genre of the show– Children’s theatre and story telling
If you would like more information or are interested in booking the show please contact us at by email: info@telltalehearts.co.uk or Tel: 07803 724529