Princesses, Dragons and Helicopter Stories: Storytelling and story acting in the early years

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Lifetime access to thirty-six online videos demonstrating poems and actions across the seasons for you to share with your children. They give children autonomy. By letting children take control and use their imagination - it’s all up to them. They choose what they want to create and how to create it - they drive the story and act it out however they choose to. ‍ Two children from around the stage came up to take on the role of her parents. Another group of six children created the walls of her bedroom. They stood around her, forming a prison. The girl in the story looked out through the walls of children, peering at the class with the saddest of eyes. Martha was in her element. It’s about celebrating the poetry of children’s language, as well as the way they speak and act,” says Trisha.

Trisha Lee’s storytelling creates imaginary worlds where your children will lose themselves. Music and sound from David Baird brings these tales to life as we take you on a journey of lost mittens, tiny elves and singing donkeys. The Story Basket gives you: The length of time you have access to each programme depends on the programme itself. For example, The Poetry Basket is not subscription-based and gives you access for life, whereas The Story Basket and The Poetry Basket 2 are yearly rolling subscriptions. Helicopter Stories On Demand gives one year’s worth of access, and can be renewed upon request. I think a good dose of play is something all of us could do with at the moment. Helicopter Stories at Home Meanwhile, in another nursery, I was told a story by a 3-year-old Polish boy, who spoke very little English. They let the child work through a big emotion, idea or event sitting on their shoulders by processing it in a way that’s accessible to them - by visualising and working through it with movement. This could be a family member passing away, a big traffic accident or divorce.At MakeBelieve Arts we believe in the power of story to develop cognitive abilities, improve literacy, explore emotional functions and engage children with learning. Working with EYFS and KS1 practitioners, we are building towards a storytelling curriculum, through which all children can thrive and grow. We believe that this creativity should continue throughout education, with pupils receiving and delivering storytelling as part of their everyday learning. The good thing is, you can use Helicopter Stories at Home with as little as one child. It is suitable for age two upwards, and because it is routed in play, children can adapt the rules, making it work across a mixture of age groups. Even his mother wasn’t sure where the information came from, but perhaps through something he’d watched or something he’d heard, Alex had made the connections and demonstrated that in his story. The use of storytelling and story acting, or what Trisha calls Helicopter Stories, was started by the wonderful Vivian Gussin Paley, a Boston teacher who made it her life’s work to put children’s learning to the forefront. Trisha is determined her legacy will not be forgotten. Alex’s story was told to my colleague, Isla, on a normal Helicopter Stories day in a private, voluntary and independent setting (PVI) in Havering.

I once had a child create a story about the tragedy of 9/11, and I was a little worried,” admits Trish. “It was a powerful story, and the child who told it wanted to be the plane [...] It turned out to be one of the most powerful stories I have ever seen.” Poetry develops the skill of prediction, where the rhyming structure of the poems allows children to guess what word might come next.All that’s needed is a roll of masking tape, sheets of A5 paper and a curious and enthusiastic practitioner. The pupil tells a story which is scribed word-for-word by their teacher on one sheet of A5. The storyteller decides which part they would like to play and the class gathers together around the marked out stage. Other pupils are brought in to fulfil parts as story actors and the rest of the group sit and observe as story listeners.

When Vivian Gussin Paley wrote You Can’t Say You Can’t Play, she radically changed the way her classroom had been doing Storytelling and Story Acting. From that moment onwards, Vivian went around the stage, in turn, selecting children to act in each of the stories. In this way, gender roles are blurred. Boys became princesses; girls become baddies. The storyteller chooses which part they play but they Do Not get to cast the other parts. Helicopter Stories On Demand gives up to four members of your team, one year’s access to an online training course. It includes everything you need to begin delivering Helicopter Stories in your setting. Over the weekend our online Learning journal had pictures posted of the children sharing their books with their parents. Such a simple way to boost parental engagement in reading and sharing books with their children You cannot thwart the determination and confidence of three and four year olds. Exciting, Engaging and Enabling… Even just reading stories to children about big emotions is a fantastic way for them to start working through things they don’t quite understand yet. But Helicopter Stories put those big emotions or ideas in a context they can really understand. Later, if you want to, as it’s Helicopter Stories at Home, you can write your own story too, and maybe act that out with your children as well. Or you could ask your child if they would like to scribe your story too. It doesn’t matter if it is in emergent writing or they can’t spell some of the words. Between the two of you, when you act it out, you will remember what it said. Write Your Child’s Words ExactlyThe course also includes Units on Grammar, Emergent Writing, Special Educational Needs, Stories with Two Year Olds and The Power of Story. As a practitioner, you can help boost creativity, emotional and social development and promote teamwork - and all you have to do is listen and write! And there is great potential for this to be develop; how wonderful it would be to show him pictures of other countries, or objects from around the world, to enable him to explore the tastes and flavours of these different places for example? Try to capture you child’s way of speaking. They may make grammatical mistakes but don’t correct them during their storytelling. You can model correct language at any time. Let Helicopter Stories at Home time be about creativity and celebrating your child’s unique voice.

Below are some of the points for parents and carers that are included in Helicopter Stories at Home. Listening To Your Child’s Story Children use storytelling and role play to express their ideas and make sense of the world. However children with speech and language difficulties can find it hard to express themselves in a coherent way.As the whole class say the words to Furry Squirrel, some children will act out the poems. One child might use the squirrel finger puppet, while another will use their body to become the tree. We might even work on their understanding of the world by asking ‘the tree’ what kind of tree they are… ‘Would you like to be an evergreen tree? A coniferous tree? A deciduous tree? If you’re a deciduous tree, are you an autumn tree or a summer tree?’ This is the strength of Helicopter Stories. It allows us to tap into the world of the child in a way that nothing else does. Through using the approach on a regular basis, we can see, and value, the expertise in the children we work with and discover the unique way they see the world. As they are walking, waiting, playing, sitting, eating and in many other situations, the words just keep coming. The language seems to flow, bringing them together. And they love the sound of their voices. Let me share a book with you….