*Kayleigh Keam, a Team Assistant from BBC Learning, recently volunteered to help out at the Henshaws children’s Christmas party.
Henshaws is a charity giving expert care, advice and training to anyone affected by sight loss. It works with people with learning disabilities and their family, friends and colleagues.
As part of the ‘Story Time’ project, organised in partnership with BBC Outreach, four BBC of staff created a Christmas story to present to children at the party.
I volunteered as a presenter and read an interactive Christmas story at a party with Henshaws, a charity for blind people. The children were provided with oodles of instruments to help bring the story to life and part of my role on the day was to encourage them to make as much noise as possible at certain points throughout the story.
I had to choose a ‘character’ to play and dressed up for the part.
Fortunately, the story had already been written, I just had to present it! There were children of all ages and abilities and this was something that I had to consider when engaging the children in the story.
Having an interest in presenting, but with not much experience in this area, this project was the perfect opportunity for me to get some practise!
As I used to teach in a primary school, I am familiar with interacting with children, however catering for children with various disabilities which affected sight, behaviour and concentration is something that I have not done before. I found the whole experience extremely rewarding, and it made me really think about how best to engage children with severe disabilities, alongside those without.
This is an aspect of the Outreach project that I can benefit from, both in my BBC work and my personal language project for children. A great opportunity, highly recommended!
*BBC Outreach offers BBC staff the opportunity to volunteer time and skills to make a big difference in communities across the UK.
