By Parul Chandra, Head Teacher, and contributors Coco Delaporte, Alice Findsen, Sadie Parrinello, Jessica Predom, Amy Shin, Teachers
You monkeys, you, give me back my caps! You monkeys, you, give me back my caps!” The children chanted this refrain from Caps for Sale, a tale of some monkeys and a peddler, during their dramatic play near the hatstand. They enjoyed revisiting the story we had read a month prior through their play. Many children who typically did not play together were gathered around the hatstand, donning a hat and waving their fingers at the peddler who was demanding his caps back. The shared book experience, the colorful variety of hats on offer, and the mastery over the storyline brought these children together in their dramatic play.
I once had a friend who watched several episodes from The Office over and over again. When I asked her why, she said she just felt like it and couldn’t explain why. Another friend told me that when she was a child, there were hardly any books in her house except for her grandparents’ copy of The Book of Knowledge: The Children’s Encyclopedia from the 1940s. It included many Grimm’s Fairy Tales, but my friend read only her favorite ones repeatedly. When she grew older and got her own copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, she tracked down her favorites from The Book of Knowledge and just kept reading them over and over. Yet another friend continues to reread her favorite novels every year, even though she’s practically memorized them.
It’s a phenomenon we see at Bing and hear about from parents: If a child responds positively to a book, chances are they will ask to have it read multiple times. There’s much in the education literature about the benefits to children from hearing a story again and again. But why is this human nature? Is it our need for mastery? Our need for comfort and finding comfort in what’s familiar? Is it that we all share a desire to find something in a story that reflects back to us what we most need to see? At Bing, we observe and honor this phenomenon by rereading books and hearing stories repeatedly, and we use this human need to enhance and expand the classroom experience.
Teachers choose a “key book” to be read at story time for an entire week. This is a book the teachers feel has potential for sustained engagement, as the book will be read aloud every day. In addition, activities connected to the book—both planned and spontaneous—take place outside of story time. The key book is set out on a table for any child to examine on their own. By rereading a book, children become more familiar with the storyline and enjoy retellings. Even after the book is reread throughout the week, children have opportunities for independent exploration, allowing them to enjoy more activities related to the key book. At Bing a book is much more than a physical object—it is as big as a child’s imagination. These book-sharing interactions help them build knowledge they then transfer
beyond the storybook to everyday meaningful situations. This transfer goes beyond learning: It’s the ability to apply newly acquired information to their existing understanding/theories.
This past autumn quarter, story time in Center AM began with reading Caps for Sale. At the end of that week, a group of children decided to enact the story as a play. They selected characters, designed costumes, practiced their lines, and acted out the story in front of one another. The book traveled to the patio the following week and was revisited at music time with the children performing their version of the story play accompanied by musical instruments.
Weeks after we’d introduced Caps for Sale, the children were still engrossed in their reenactment of the book. The hatstands in the classroom, adorned with a plethora of hats, served as an invitation for dramatic play as children used them to reenact scenes from the book. By doing so independent of the teachers, the children built on a shared experience that was meaningful to them and allowed them to express themselves in fun and creative ways. For example, while the children played in the Redwood Grove in the yard, they imagined the monkeys hiding behind trees and teased the peddler who was demanding his caps back. Over time, the children came up with a myriad of ways to expand their understanding and love for the book. Caps for Sale may have been published over 80 years ago, but the children continually find new opportunities to draw meaning, joy, and creativity from this beloved classic.
At Bing, choosing a key book every week is part of our larger mission to promote literacy in the classroom. We use the word “literacy” to describe the ability to read, write, and comprehend the written word. Although Bing does not “teach” the alphabet and reading to children using a didactic approach, children have many opportunities to explore literacy in both traditional and nontraditional ways.
Beginning with name tags, children identify the written word associated with a friend’s name. They understand that the letters are symbols and, joined together, they make a word. In Ezra Jack Keats’ A Letter to Amy, the main character, Peter, writes a letter to his friend. Thanks to the introduction of our classroom mailboxes, where each child has their own, the book inspired the children to write and send letters to their friends. Each year, in our multi-aged classrooms, there are children who are developmentally ready to take this activity to the next level, and, supported by the teachers, they go beyond inventive spelling and begin to read and write through letter writing and mailbox play.
During story time, we read the key book but also make time and space for children to share their experiences and creations from the morning. The week spent reading Not a Box, by Antoinette Portis, highlighted all the possibilities presented by a simple cardboard box. At the start of the week, children defined a box as a thing to put objects in. Inspired by the book and fueled by their imaginations, children began creating boxes using found materials or drawings and articulated diverse purposes for their boxes. Story time served as an outlet for children to share and express their ideas through their own versions of a box. Toward the end of the week, the simple act of drawing a box on paper transformed into fairies, elephants, houses, helicopters, and apples as the children embellished their boxes. Creative and imaginative ideas flowed as the children thought about what they might add to a basic square box. We collected the drawings and compiled them into Not a Box by Center AM Children—which became the key book that week, much to the children’s delight. Revisiting their drawings in book form prompted them to imagine many more things a box could represent—from a rainbow, magnet, or elephant to a submarine being washed by a bunny.
In addition to promoting literacy and spurring creativity, books can be a vehicle for children to describe and manage their feelings. Sometimes I’m Bombaloo, by Rachel Vail, tells the story of a girl who transforms from her fun-loving self into an angry “Bombaloo” when her baby brother knocks down her block tower. It’s a story that helps children witness an emotional and difficult experience in a playful, relatable way, and we used it beyond story time to expand the children’s vocabulary of expressive language. For example, when story time was centered around the song “My Bing School Friend Is Hiding,” teachers placed images of the children behind colorful houses, and throughout the song the person in each house was revealed. We then asked the children to demonstrate different emotions for their pictures. As each face was revealed, the group was invited to share their hypothesis for how the person might be feeling, which further expanded the children’s exposure to emotions-based vocabulary.
During a long bout of rain, the wet weather inspired a new book selection: Mushroom in the Rain, by Mirra Ginsburg, about an ant who gets caught in the rain and finds shelter under a mushroom. As the downpour continues, several animals seek shelter and squeeze under the mushroom alongside the ant. The book instills a sense of wonder as to how so many animals can fit under the mushroom. At the end of the week, when children were asked what happens to mushrooms in the rain, they answered collectively, “It grows!” Weeks later, while the children played outdoors, some gathered under an umbrella and one child looked up and exclaimed, “We’re under the mushroom in the rain!”
The classroom focus on story extensions offer Bing’s multi-age groupings the opportunity to develop their emergent literacy in joyful and meaningful ways. These experiences, which start with a key book selection and continue throughout the week, integrate multiple disciplines, including dramatic play, language, music, math, science, and art. Returning to the book at story time creates the framework within which children master the storyline while also serving as a launching pad to make their own stories. Children thrill at being active participants in a story when they are encouraged to extend the story through their play. They are planting the seeds for a love of literature and language that will grow bigger as they do.