'Once Upon a Touch' Story Massage for Children

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'Once Upon a Touch' is a lovely massage story book for children by Mary Atkinson and Sandra Hooper.  I ordered a copy of this book when I discovered it by accident searching on the internet. It only took two days to arrive once I had placed my order. Having read through it I can't wait to get to work to try out some of the lovely stories with my students with PMLD.
The book is spiral bound and gives details of how to use the book, the benefits of massage, suggested guidelines and then how to do the ten massage strokes that form the basis of the massage stories. Massage stories included Traditional Tales such as 'Cinderella' and 'Little Red Riding Hood', Seasonal Strokes such as the 'Pancake Song' and 'Countdown to Christmas', In your Imagination which includes stories such as 'Can you Hear the Music' and 'The Circus Comes to Town'. There is also a selection of stories titled 'Adding a Personal Touch' and this includes stories named 'Let's Make a Birthday Cake' and 'Olly Goes Fishing'. Another chapter of stories is titled 'Hands on Learning' with stories such as 'Walking on the Moon' and 'Deep in the Rain Forest'. Finally there is a chapter which has a further selection of stories called 'Time for Talking' , stories in this chapter for example are 'A Safe Place' and 'The Frightened Ghost'.


I can think of lots of children in my setting which would benefit from having stories delivered in this way, promoting communication and positive touch through massage. The authors of this book have a website where you can buy additional resources to support the book, book training, read comments and see example massages in practice. Click on the link below to take you straight to the website. I highly recommend this book for anyone working in a special school setting and will be posting really soon about my experiences of using these stories with the pupils that I work with. 

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