Story time begins in ritual.

After a drink of water we light our story candle. "Come into our story house, where the light comes to shine, and the spinning wheel turns all day long ... and thus I spin and gently tread and spin a fine and golden thread ..."

A woman asked Einstein how best to prepare her son to be a scientist.

Einstein: "Tell him fairy tales."

Woman: "What else?"

Einstein: "Tell him more fairy tales. Creative imagination is the essential element in the intellectual equipment of the true scientist."

A story told by heart exercises the children's ability to create their own internal imagery--a capacity at risk today when children are bombarded by so many external images.

We tell a great variety of multicultural fairy tales and folk tales. These are teaching stories, cloaked in the archetypal language that speaks directly to the young child's state of consciousness. These stories elucidate the hero's journey, where humility, curiosity, generosity, patience, and tenacity are rewarded and a stagnant world beset with evil is transformed and renewed. 

Each story, with all of it's rich vocabulary, is told word for word on Monday and Tuesday. The children help with the telling on Wednesdays. On Thursdays the story is acted out in a simple active way. Jane Healy in Your Child's Growing Mind says that theatrics allow all parts of the child's brain to talk to one another.