While many people will be attending Halloween parties Friday, families and friends of Renaissance Academy students are invited to a different kind of celebration. They are hosting a Grand Night of Stories, the culmination of Storytelling Month.

The month's events began on Oct. 2 when student storytellers from the past two years shared their stories with various classes.

"Roaming storytellers in the past have sparked enthusiasm among their hearers and this has encouraged the hearers to be tellers themselves," Jeanette Jones said. Jones coordinates the activities for Storytelling Month. "We hope this will encourage all students who desire to create their own story."

After giving the students a taste of storytelling fun, students and their families were invited to a story creation workshop, taught by Renaissance Academy parent Steffani Raff.

"We had eight families, including 17 students, come to the workshops where Steffani guided us through all of the steps to create our own stories," Jones said. "We chose our own characters and developed their physical and emotional attributes by interviewing each others' characters. We thought through scenery, and finally had Steffani guide us through a basic story, inserting our own characters with their own interests, strengths and weaknesses."

While many of the students' stories are based on outlines presented at the workshop, they all are personalized and vary greatly.

"The characters and settings are so varied, from meteorologists to llamas, from subways to Mars, that they are still interesting," Jones said.

Seven-year-old Jody Goebel based her story on "The Gingerbread Man," but put a personalized spin on it.

"It is now called "The Burrito," because I like to eat burritos," Jody said.

"The storytellers worked on their stories and were able to refine them on Oct. 23. It was a powerful experience and one I will include every year from now on," said Jones. "Everyone bonded that night that we had each open up a part of ourselves and shared it willingly with the group. At the end of the night we were all friends."

To develop their storytelling skills, the storytellers participated in Roaming Storytellers earlier this week.

"Each of the students was able to tell their stories to at least five classrooms, ranging from kindergarten to middle school science class," Jones said. "The classrooms have a blast and laugh with the stories and the tellers' confidence blooms. After two hours everyone who has participated is smiling."

"I've done three years of storytelling," said 13-year-old Crispin Jones. "The best part is telling to the little kids. You get to see their expressions and they have cute little laughs."

Now that the storytellers have developed their stories and their telling abilities, they say they hope to share their hard work with a larger audience.

"I want to tell my story to everyone," Jody said.

The Grand Night of Stories will begin at 6:30 on Friday evening and run for about an hour.

"This will be a great evening performance where students and parents will tell their stories for families and fellow students," Jones said.

Seventeen students will be joined by five parents and professional story teller Steffani Raff. Anybody is welcome to attend, and milk and cookies will be served at the event.