By Mary Munday, Head Teacher
"I want to be the mommy bird!” said one child. “I want to be the baby bird!” said another. These children were answering their story time teacher, who had asked if they would like to act out Are You My Mother by P.D. Eastman at the end-of-the-week story time.
At Bing, teachers often repeat a story throughout the week or longer, and we often vary how we tell it. For example, the first day a teacher will read the story to the group; the following day, the teacher may use props from the classroom to represent details in the book or use felt pieces or laminated pictures to retell the story. At the end of the week, children may act out the story as the teacher narrates the book or they may make up their own version of the story. With repeated telling of the story, children become more familiar with the context and meaning. With multiple readings and extensions, children with different learning styles can grasp story lines and events in different ways. Reading the book introduces the story to the class and supports auditory learners, who learn through hearing. Providing pictures with felt pieces and laminated pictures or using items from the classroom helps visual learners, who learn best through seeing. Acting out the story physically helps kinesthetic learners, who learn best by doing. In addition to learning through hearing and seeing, all young children learn through meaningful hands-on experiences—through touching, doing and moving.
To create opportunities for hands-on experiences, teachers in the Monday/Wednesday/Friday morning Twos classroom filled a basket with felt pieces, laminated pictures and other props and placed it near a large felt board that children could use freely during class time. Children pulled chairs close to the board and chose felt pieces with a specific intention. For example, a child chose four felt houses, a felt mouse and a nearby fox puppet. He placed the felt houses onto the felt board side by side and tucked the mouse under one of the houses. He called out, “Come on! Story time!” As a few children sat down on the carpet along with a teacher, he began singing a song often sung during story time: “The old fox is looking, looking, looking. The old fox is looking for the mouse. Are you in the blue house?” He lifted up the house and said, “No!” Then he moved the fox toward another house. “Are you in the green house? “ He carefully lifted up the green house. “Yes!” He repeated this song multiple times as children watched and joined in singing, moving their bodies to the song, and guessing where the mouse was hiding. Similar scenes played out over the year, with many children recreating the song using different animals. Part of the fun of these activities for the children is the opportunity to be a “teacher” as they use props and act out songs or invite peers to the carpet for story time.
As the children’s interest in elaborating on songs and stories increased, at group time at end of the day they asked to take on various roles in familiar songs, such as monkeys jumping on a bed or frogs on a log. As teachers introduced new songs, children eagerly asked to participate. This led to requests to not only be a part of a song, but to be an animal or character in the weekly story. Teachers invited children to participate at story time and a long list of participants were formed. “I want to be a monkey! I want to be the nocerous (rhinoceros)! I want to be a bird! I want to be a lion!” Songs and stories were expanded and often recreated with new animals or themes.
Children benefit in many ways by acting out stories and songs. They learn new words, become more familiar with the story, and as they change the story or make up songs, they think creatively and develop their imagination. Acting out stories also helps children develop self-esteem and teaches them about cooperation and working together as a group. Stories such as The Turnip by Pierre Morgan and The Enormous Potato by Aubrey Davis encourage working together toward a common goal. These stories introduce and illustrate how wonderful and important teamwork can be. Retelling and acting out the story gives the children an opportunity to make it their own. For example, a teacher asked children if they would like to be a character from the story Are You My Mother by P.D. Eastman and they made it their own by creating their own characters for the play, including a lion, rhinoceros and a shark.
Using props to recreate a story also became a whole-body experience in the Twos. After reading Not a Box by Antoinette Portis, a teacher brought in large boxes for the children to explore. The teacher wanted to see if the children would use the boxes to extend the story on their own. Immediately, they climbed into the boxes or used them for building. Some children actively engaged with these large props while others chose to observe. Children asked the teacher to reread the book to them as they were exploring or observing. After reading the story, the children described their boxes as hiding places, buildings, towers, robots, airplanes and trampolines. Teachers took photos of the action and used the photos with the children’s descriptions to create a new edition of the story: Not a Box retold by MWF A.M. Twos. This became part of the classroom bookshelf for the children to revisit their experience.
Repeated experiences with books promote early literacy and language skills, including an increased vocabulary as well as enhanced story comprehension. Books are always available for the children to look through and read with a teacher, and those that are read at story time are kept in the classroom for the entire quarter or longer for children to revisit. After hearing the story multiple times, the children show a true understanding of the book.
As teachers reflected at the end of the year, we discussed why our classroom’s children find retelling stories and songs so fascinating. As many of the children in the Twos have older siblings at Bing, one factor is that they have watched their siblings or their peers act out stories and songs. Observing in the older classroom may have piqued their interest. Another factor we discovered was parental interest in story telling and acting at home. Some parents were retelling familiar stories at home and acting out stories with their children. For others, the interest emerged from watching their interested peers in the classroom. When these experiences extended in the Twos classroom this year, a true love for books emerged—an interest the teachers will support as they continue on to the preschool classrooms.
To conclude, I would like to share a story retold by a child (age 3) as a teacher turned the pages of a book. This story was read at story time and the children acted it out at the end of the week. With repeated experiences, he grasped the story concepts and became an active participant in the play. Through his story telling, he recalled details, sequences, vocabulary, and his own experience playing a bird in the story play with peers.
Are You My Mother? By P.D. Eastman
Retold by Ben L. (Age 3)
Me the mommy bird. That me sitting on the egg. The egg jumped and jumped and out came the baby bird. Me flying. That Asher (pointing to baby bird). He looked for me. We went right past me. He met a kitten. He met the hen. He met a dog. He met a cow. A kitten and a hen and a dog and a cow. He want his mother but me gone. He met a car. Now he met a boat and this is not my mother. He met an airplane. Is that my mother? It is not my mother. He met a snort. That’s Ian. That’s my mother! Nope. Get me out of here! He put him in the tree. That me! That Asher (pointing to the birds in the tree). You’re not a cow. You’re not a cat. You’re not a hen. You are a bird and you are my mother. The End