Storytelling Competition

This year's school wide story telling competition was one for the books.  Olivia started it out a few weeks before the boys.  This year she decided to tell the story of the Enchanted Quill which is a lesser known fairytale recently discovered.  Everyone in the 3rd grade was required to participate.  She competed against everyone in her class and won one of two spots to compete against all the other 3rd grade class winners.  Then, she won one of two spots for 3rd graders to compete in the lower grade competition in the form of an assembly for all the lower grade classes at the school.

The boys weren't given too much time to prepare they were told on a Wednesday or Thursday evening the night of a very busy week that they had to decide to participate by Sunday and come prepared to tell their stories on Monday.  Carter wavered back and forth about whether he wanted to participate, but in the end both boys decided they wanted to participate.  Camden told The Berenstain Bears and The Spooky Old Tree and was super dynamic.  Carter told I Love You Stinky Face and got lost of laughs.  The boys competed with all the 1st graders who chose to participate in their classroom and performed for all the 1st grade classes.  Amazingly they both won the two spots for 1st graders in the lower grade assembly competition.


So all 3 of my kids would be competing in this lower grade competition.  I was honestly just focused on how fun the assembly would be with 3 of the 8 kids being mine, but then Aunt Kylie pointed out that they were all actually competing against each other to move on.  That week preparing for the assembly was nutso.  I felt like every spare minute we had we were working on perfecting someone's story.  Camden and Liv thrive on an audience and were well prepared.  Carter gets nervous and I was worried would freeze up there in front of all those people.  So, the night before we got a bunch of neighbors to listen to all the kids perform their stories so they could practice.

The morning of, I had Camden run through his story once and then sent him and Liv off on the bus (afterwards realizing I never had Liv run through her story at all)!  I kept Carter home and we went over his story a few times to build confidence and then I drove him to school.  They performed their stories in front of the school assembly and 3 actual story telling festival judges.  Camden did great!  Carter did the best I had ever seen him, and Olivia won!  They were all 3 so excited and we celebrated by getting lunch together off school campus.

Liv has now been invited to send in a video of her telling her story to possibly get selected to perform as a youth storyteller at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival in September.  We sent in her video and should hear back sometime in May whether she makes it into the festival.  It would be a super fun experience.  But, honestly the whole school story telling competition with all 3 Marshall kids making it to the assembly was super fun this year.

Grandma and Grandpa (Derek's parents) were the best supporters.  The watched all 3 of Liv's performances at each level--I'm sure they were tired of her story by the last time.  They came to the kids assembly performance and then gave each kid a balloon attached to a two dollar bill afterward.  The kids were super excited about this.  First thing the next morning, Carter climbed into my bed with his balloon attached to his wrist.