Your Imagination Presents uses an innovative combination of storytelling techniques to create an exciting environment that fosters a child’s imagination and creativity.
• The adventures are told from the point of view of the listener. The other characters in the stories encourage you to be a part of the
unfolding action, making suggestions to you such as: “Show them we come in peace” or “Why don’t you decide which way to go?” The music and the other characters’ reactions continue to reinforce this feeling of “belonging” in the adventure. By being actively involved in the plot,
things come to exciting life for you in a way they couldn’t if you were sitting passively reading a story or watching a television show.
• Your Imagination Presents uses a child’s imagination to bring the
tales to visual life. The stories are visually stimulating, but not visually specific. For example, you might be escaping from a flying monster in a futuristic aircraft, but what the monster and
the aircraft look like are entirely up to you. The dialogue helps your imagination provide the visual, such as when one of your astronaut crewmates says, “That's sure a mysterious-looking
world. It’s not anything like our Earth! What's that over there? And there?” By avoiding a nonstop flow of detailed information, Your Imagination Presents sweeps you up in its fast-moving action.
• While you’re listening to, talking with, and helping out the other characters in the stories, you not only get to
decide what things look like, but the stories also give you opportunities to decide how things sound, feel, and taste. And each time you listen, you get to climb, fly, solve
problems, answer questions, and act out the adventures in different ways.
• Your Imagination Presents poses open-ended questions that the child can try to answer either
during the adventure or after the listening session. Whether one of your fellow adventurers asks: “Do you think we’ve discovered a new species?” or “Can you tell what’s wrong?” many
questions remain unanswered, allowing children to try to fill in the blanks in whatever manner they’d like. These questions can also be used after storytime to help a child develop critical
thinking skills.
• Instead of using songs with predetermined lyrics, Your Imagination Presents features
continuous dramatic music to help carry your child
along on these exciting journeys, the way a motion picture soundtrack weaves its spell on you while you’re immersed in your favorite movie.
The subtleties in composition and orchestration lend themselves to repeated listening, inspiring new images, actions, and ideas all the time. By using music in this
fashion, each child will “see” the action in his mind different from everyone else.
• Even the sound effects, such as a force field or the opening of a spaceship hatch
, are created musically, helping to keep the child immersed in the creative action. Footsteps and wind don’t sound the
way they normally do, because the listener isn’t supposed to imagine such things in familiar ways, but rather to picture them in new and different ways.
• Each Your Imagination Presents CD comes with an illustrated Creativity Booklet, with
thinking and drawing exercises to further stimulate the imagination rather than to try to elicit predetermined answers from children.
There are many times when society tells a child that he or she is “wrong.” While children need to be taught that there are correct and incorrect
ways of doing many things, too much criticism can stunt a child’s imagination and creativity. With Your Imagination Presents, there’s no
limit to what a child can envision, and the positive reinforcement from the other characters can help foster a child’s confidence and self-esteem
, so important at this stage of development. So, while children might excel or fail at other things in life, Your Imagination Presents allows them a safe haven where
they can succeed in their very own way every single time.
Besides being a lot of fun to listen to at home or on car trips, Your Imagination Presents can
help parents bring out what’s special and unique about their own child by following up with drawing, writing, story-telling, and role-playing exercises. Because of the way in which it elicits
creative behavior in children, Your Imagination Presents can also serve as a wonderful aid for
teachers, drama coaches, and child therapists.
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