Using "Jungle Doctor" Stories

From SPARK

One-sentence summary

Using "Jungle Doctor" stories with young children in a home school situation.

Description

• Each week I spend one day caring for two young girls, ages four and six, and sometimes their three-year-old male cousin.
• All three children enjoy having me read or tell stories.
• The children live in Christian homes. Both families are involved in church activities.
• The parents want me to use Christian materials.

Considerations

• I found a website: www.sarahsministry.org has online stories from two Jungle Doctor books written by Australian, Dr. Paul White.

• Dr. White was a medical missionary in Tanzania in the 1940's. He wrote books for children. He used only African story tellers, African settings, and African animals. The stories help children know how to follow Jesus.

• The two books on the website are:Jungle Doctor's Fables and Jungle Doctor Monkey Tales. The line drawings from the website can be downloaded and printed.

• I used these printed pictures for the children to look at as I told each story. I let them cut the pictures out and paste them on a piece of paper, so they could retell the stories.

• The young children have good recall of the stories and the names of the humans and animals.

• We read one story a week and then talk about it. Some of the books and all of the comic stories have ‘talking about' suggestions at the end. The online stories do not have these helps.

Results

• The children enjoy the stories and ask for more. They remember the stories and the characters better than I do.
• Because all children love stories about animals, I believe children in other cultures, (especially Africa), would understand the meaning of these stories.

Limitations

Guidelines for Use

Where to Obtain

Link to Producer or Source Organization

Cost

Producer/Owners

Author/Artist/Producer

Vida, Children's Resource Coordinator, Vernacular Media Services

Current copyright owner

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