For the second reading week, Jenny and I had started to plan the story of Milo and the Magical Stones. We had to create a plan that would engage the younger audience making it an entertaining experience for them. Jenny and I believed that the best way to engage the young audience was by creating mouse costumes to match the protagonist of the story. By doing this we would be bringing to story to life watching us act out the story. We had decided to cut out a semi-circle of grey paper which we then folded into a cone for the nose. To create the ears we decided to make it using grey and pink pieces of paper. The way we could use these costumes was by using safety pins. Keeping our masks on was important due to the condition in which we are in and decided to slide the safety pink through the mask holding it steady on the face. The same method was to hold up the ears but instead, the safety pins would be going through a hoodie to keep them propped up. The story focuses on a mouse finding a magical stone, another crucial prop would be a magical stone. We decided to use a tennis ball, which we had found in the classroom to be representative of this magical stone. With the costumes ready for the following session, we had to set up a proper format. We had to be conscious about how much space on screen we would be giving the actors and how much space there would be to show the pages of the book. The final decision was to split the camera into two parts half being for the book and then the other half being for the actors.

On the day of the reading session, we had set it up ready to go. A minor mistake I personally made was not bringing in a hoodie which made putting on the ears a challenge. This was something that bothered me because during the middle of the story when acting out the narration of the book the ears would fall down. This would not only annoy me but I felt that this would also be a distraction to the children focusing more on the ears falling down rather than on the actual story. Personally, I believe that this reading section was successful. At the end of the story, the children seemed to have enjoyed the story and had been attentive been listening to it. This story had a different ending which was interesting since after the story we had asked the children which ending they had enjoyed the most and there was about an even split between both. This story had been a great success in entertaining the young audience and giving them a good time. 

We had finished this story early so we had to choose other stories to read to them. However, these stories were not prepared beforehand and were a mess to read. It was very unorganized and didn’t turn out the right way that we had expected. We had hoped that the stories would sound more interesting and be more engaging. The stories did not sound right since we had written beforehand which made some of the kids get distracted. We had learned that it is important to keep an extra story prepared just in case we have extra time at the end of the service. If we don’t have another story ready it will make an unorganized mess during the session and won’t be successful. By having another story prepared we will be making better use of our time and keeping the younger audience entertained throughout the whole period.