Nadia describes a literacy event, in which he comes to dictate his very first story, which she writes down for him. Such small stories, are what drive language and literacy development and learning, though in the busy-ness of home and school life, their significance can be underestimated, or ignored…
Language and literacy learning during early childhood, is an integrated process of storying through play and exploration. Closely observing young children’s experiences, offers adults contextual understanding which enables them to meet early learning needs in holistic ways. In the first of two pieces…
Rich, pretend play underlies our ability to understand the symbolic nature of written language. But it’s much more than that too. Pretend play also has the power to comfort, help solve problems and leads to empathy and understanding. This is the theme of…
Seeing is believing, but one has to know what to look for – and in South Africa, we need demonstrations of high-quality early literacy teaching and learning which revolve around imagination and stories. To reclaim story is to find the key to meaningful teaching and...
In our Storyplay work, we try to create respectful spaces for children to be curious and imaginative learners. We’ve found this process to be extraordinarily enriching for enabling central aspects of language…
By early childhood specialist Nadia Lubowski, who co-ordinates PRAESA’s Storyplay initiatives. It is Zoe’s Educare’s second birthday and I went to deliver some storybooks PRAESA donated to celebrate this small but wonderful beacon of…
The ‘what if’ is what happens when we open up the book and allow it to expand our boundaries. We switch thinking from inside the book to a wider, new world of possibilities.
As the imagined worlds neared completion, the children noticed that there were now materials and resources around the classroom that they could use to bring the dragon and its environment to life.
As we neared tidy-up time, we asked the teacher what she felt the children had covered from the curriculum. She spread her arms wide and exclaimed “ All of this, look! They have done home language, maths, cutting and painting, sticking, playdough and building, spelling, writing and reading. All with ONE STORY.”