4 Sentences By Gianni Rodari To Educate Children
How do stories originate? How are narrated tales created? These inquisitive questions from the children led Gianni Rodari, in 1973, to write the work entitled Grammatica da Fantasia.
This work contains some ways to make up stories for children and, in turn, help them make up stories as well.
The phrases by Gianni Rodari, master of fantasy par excellence, were written in the 70s. Despite this, they remain current due to their modern approach. Let’s look at some of these famous phrases.
4 brilliant phrases by Gianni Rodari
Playing with words and imagination is not a waste of time. It’s getting closer to reality and seizing the words. Gianni Rodari’s sentences aim to defend children as active creators.
Stimulate imagination and creativity
Children have the ability to change what is not right or to transform the world they wanted to impose on them. Imagination and creativity must be nurtured from childhood, and this must have a very important place in education.
teach to think
Rodari mentioned that it didn’t seem arbitrary to him to deduce that “if they want to teach how to think, they must teach how to invent”. Giving children a dose of fantasy in their imagination helps to enrich their appreciation of reality and life itself.
Fantasy should not impose itself on reality
“Fantasy is not a bad wolf to be afraid of, nor a crime to constantly watch, but rather an extraordinarily rich world and stupidly marginalized.”
This is one of Gianni Rodari’s phrases, written in 1990, which started the great children’s tales. It teaches that reality must not neutralize fantasy and, vice versa, fantasy must not impose itself on reality.
Both must complement each other to nurture and project children’s literature, it’s a united process that combines reality with fantasy, along with talent and creativity.
human mind reactions
“Throwing a stone into a lake that is calm causes a series of waves on the surface that, without a doubt, will affect what they find wherever they pass”.
This metaphor explains in poetic language the reactions of the human mind to a single word. Just like when you throw a stone into a pond that is at rest, it creates waves in the water, causing different events within the pond that will affect everything in that environment.
Rodari’s techniques to develop children’s creativity
In his work Grammar da Fantasia , one can find a great number of techniques and resources, which serve to help develop children’s creativity and imagination , such as:
- The fantastic binomial. It consists of giving children 2 words that have no relation to each other. Basically, words with which to build a story.
- Tales or fables in reverse. As in a play on words, Rodari altered the arguments and values of the stories, for example, Thumb, the giant.
- Words that induce. Use a group of unrelated words or images to form a story that connects them.
- What would happen if… Construct a story by asking the child questions to create, like a weird introduction, like “what would happen if the wind disappeared”?
- Short story salad. It’s mixing characters, places and events from different stories. It can be invented at the beginning of the story or at the end. Also, it is very helpful to develop the child’s creativity.
- Construction of a riddle. A guess can be formed by associating and comparing words.
In conclusion, regardless of time, time or distance, Gianni Rodari’s phrases remain in force, despite globalization and technology.
Basically, Rodari’s thoughts remain current. In addition, they help to discover the benefits of using their imagination to face problems and convey this idea to children.