MAKING MISTAKES
learning through participative storytelling
One day, as I was tutoring my 8 year old cousin, she suddenly turned to me and said,
“Why don’t you just tell me the answer, because I’ll be wrong anyway.”
That broke my heart and got me to rethink about the value of mistakes.
There are many children's storybooks out there about mistakes,
but it is usually the fictional characters who made the errors.
So I thought, what if children were the ones who made mistakes instead?
What if they could actively participate instead of just passively read?
The Journey of Making Mistakes is a book that teaches children the value of mistakes. It requires children to make decisions in order for the story to proceed. Depending on these decisions, readers will embark on different, exciting journeys together with the main character of the book, whose design is based on my cousin.
The decisions made by little ones might lead to the good, happy ending, but some decisions could be mistakes that will lead to consequences and lessons learnt.
Besides encouraging children to be brave to try, the book also talks about different types of mistakes as well as the various strategies to approach them.
I hope that the little ones see mistakes not as big scary monsters that they have to be afraid of, but giant helpful companions that they will eventually befriend.
Thesis by Ng Zi Ning
Supervised by Hans Tan
Special thanks to: Jenny, Kelvin, Sheryl, Maggie, Valerie, Kenny, Dr Nina, Aunt Amy & Zhi Swen
