Children from three Meadow Heights playgroups have spent the past 10 weeks taking part in Westside Circus’s Tumbling Stories program, a combined literacy and circus initiative that teaches circus tricks, storytelling and language skills.
Now the children can balance, tumble and jump like never before, and the groups of three-to-five-year-olds have improved their language and storytelling skills to the point where they have produced three picture books.
The books, titled The Boy and Caterpillar, Aspro Sheep Fly Rocket and Other Stories, and The Dinosaur and the Butterfly Bus, will be launched at Meadow Heights and Bethal primary schools on December 9 and 12.
Westside Circus community program manager Jane Hartnell says The Tumbling Stories program, now in its fifth year, was designed for refugee and migrant families to promote language development and family and community relationships through the agency’s circus skills.
The organisation develops partnerships with migrant communities via VICSEG New Futures, a not-for-profit community organisation that provides support and training to migrants.
The program was funded by the Helen Macpherson Trust, the Ian Potter Foundation, Arts Victoria, the Australia Council, Department of Social Services and a partnership with VICSEG and Bethal and Meadow Heights primary schools.
“It’s an idea we think is really powerful,” says Ms Hartnell. “It introduces new ways for children and parents to be creative together. It helps strengthen relationships between mothers and children and increases confidence. They learn resilience and that it’s OK to not do something right the first time.”
