Planning for the Early Years: Storytelling and storymaking

By Judith Stevens

Planning for the Early Years: Storytelling and storymaking is a lovely book packed with adaptable ideas that can be extended for older children, or more focused for the under threes. It focuses on the prime areas of learning, especially the development of early language, defined in the 2011 Tickell review of the EYFS as the foundations for all learning. It includes photos, examples, tips, and pre- and post activity advice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Allen Group
• Release date: May 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781909280168

Book preview

Stevens

Planning to make a difference for children

A child-friendly approach to planning

Young children benefit from reflective adults who plan ahead on the basis of knowing those children: their current interests and abilities, but also what they are keen to puzzle out and learn. Each title in this series of ‘Planning for the Early Years’ offers a specific focus for children’s learning, with activities for you to fine-tune for young girls and boys whom you know well. These adult-initiated activities happen within a day or session when children have plenty of time for initiating and organising their own play. Your focus for the activities is short-term; plan ahead just enough so that everything is poised to go.

Thoughtful planning ensures that children enjoy a variety of interesting experiences that will stretch their physical skills, social and communicative abilities, and their knowledge of their own world. A flair for creative expression should be nurtured in early childhood. The national frameworks recognise that creativity is about encouraging open-ended thinking and problem-solving, just as much as opportunities for children to enjoy making something tangible. Plans that make a difference for young children connect closely with their current ability and understanding, yet offer a comfortable stretch beyond what is currently easy.

Adult-initiated activities build on children’s current interests. However, they are also planned because familiar adults have good reasons to expect that this experience will engage the children. Young children cannot ask to do something again, or develop their own version, until they have that first-time experience. The best plans are flexible; there is scope for the children to influence the details and adults can respond to what actually happens.

Planning is a process that involves thinking, discussing, doing and reflecting. Young children become part of this process, showing you their interests and preferences by their actions just as much as their words, when spoken language develops. Adult planning energy will have created an accessible, well-resourced learning environment – indoors and outdoors. The suggested activities in this book happen against that backdrop and children’s new interests can be met by enhancements to the environment – changes that they can help to organise.

Why explore storytelling and storymaking with young children?

Babies and young children are fascinated by making noises and playing with words. We know that newborn babies can differentiate between the sound of a human voice and other sounds. Babies communicate from birth too, through cries, eye contact, body position, facial expression and within the first month, a first laugh or giggle.

It is important to explore storytelling and storymaking from these very earliest days. Young children are natural storytellers and need time, space and interested adults to support their early storytelling efforts. They need time to play with words, time to be listened to and they need to know that they are valued as storytellers by audiences who want to hear what they have to say.

There is a huge difference between story reading and storytelling and both are equally valuable in their different ways. Children need opportunities to become immersed in traditional and contemporary oral stories, so they can conjure up their own mental images and have opportunities to finish, improvise, extend and create stories of their own.

Children’s knowledge and understanding of story starts from their immediate, personal world – what they have seen and what they have done, but also from the imaginary worlds which they can inhabit. Opening a book can be an adventure that unlocks doors to whole new worlds for children.

Children’s imagination will be fired by tales of magical creatures and characters with extraordinary powers. As they embellish and innovate stories themselves they will find a platform for their imagination and creativity.

Storytelling and storymaking is a truly social experience as children and familiar adults collaborate together. Communication and language in its fullest sense is enhanced as facial expressions and gestures become integral to the telling of stories.

Also, as Vivian Gussin Paley suggests in her work, as children’s stories develop within their pretend play and storymaking, they can explore their own feelings and motivations. Sometimes children value the opportunity to ‘be sad’ or ‘be scared’ or explore themes of loss or loneliness. It is important that children play this out in a secure, supportive environment with trusted adults who know them well.

Thoughtful adults: effective planning

Familiar adults, who know the children they are working with well, are an indispensable asset in engaging children and promoting learning around storytelling and storymaking. Storytelling is often a spontaneous event, especially when children ask an adult to tell the ‘story’ of something that has really happened to the group of children.

Practitioners need to ensure that planning is flexible enough to allow generous amounts of time so that they can respond to children’s spontaneous requests to share favourite rhymes and stories throughout the provision and throughout the day. Some practitioners will be very confident at supporting all areas of storytelling and storymaking, but leaders and managers also need to be aware of the support and training some team members may