On 22 July 2023, Angelica Law, Ivy Wang, Guy de Villiers and Cauvis Fung went to the Hong Kong Catholic Marriage Advisory Council (CMAC) to hold a storytelling session with children whose parents are separated or divorced. The CMAC promotes lifelong marriages and responsible parenthood. Their KID First Specialised Co-parenting Support Centre serves parents who are separated or divorced and their children, helping them cope with the stress and change.

Angelica started the session with some warm-up activities from Learning Well’s Wellness book, encouraging the children to introduce themselves to each other and talking to them about some basic emotions. We then dived into the main storytelling session, using Talk About Texts’ The Not-So Big Bad Wolf, with Ivy being the narrator, Guy as the wolf, Cauvis as Red Riding Hood and Angelica as Grandma – Angelica’s son also came to join us and had a cameo as the woodsman!

Given the age range of the children, from three to nine years old, we weren’t entirely sure how the story would be received, but all the children proved to be excellent in English and understood the story really well. The Bingo games between chapters of the story were the highlight for the children – the CMAC prepared some really nice gifts as prizes for them. We also linked the story to the emotions from Learning Well, and encouraged the children to identify emotions of the characters in each chapter. We ended the session with a game of charade, led by Guy, which the children really enjoyed.

It warmed our hearts to see how the children reacted to the story and the games. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience – from preparation to the actual session.