Balloon Storyteller Blog

When you’re a kid, having the courage to write a story and share it with others is a huge thing!

I travel to elementary schools and show kids how fun it is to write a story, and then give them a reason to share it – how about a contest with awesome prizes? After we’re done, their teachers use this contest as an incentive to make writing assignments feel like a game.

Why am I so passionate about this?  I was THAT KID – the kid who couldn’t control my impulses: always getting in trouble, talking in class, etc.

Why?  I was BORED! (A little ADD didn’t help things either.)  I only wanted to learn what I was interested in, not the class assignments.  As a result, I got to know the principal way too well.

Then I found music and theater.  This was it!  Here were the stories I loved, and now I got to tell them – loudly!  Hallelujah!  Life was good.

Later, I discovered it’s even more fun to tell stories with kids.  The sillier and louder we are, the more fun we have, and the more we learn together.  You see, kids don’t hate to learn.  They just want to learn stuff they’re interested in, not what the California State Standards say they should.

So what do I do now?  I’m a Balloon Storyteller, mostly in Southern California, but sometimes I get to travel all over the world telling stories.  It’s like balloon theater – the kids and I use balloon costumes and balloon props to tell stories.  Then the fun really starts when we use the Story Invention Game to write and perform a story right there during the show!

I’m also the founder of StorytellerKids.com, which will be a safe online place where kids can share stories they write and earn prizes while they’re at it!

My experiences as a kid in music and theater, and later as a storyteller, have shown me that if kids get passionate about something, there’s no stopping them.  Now let’s bring that passion into the classroom and see what happens.