Learning through story time is such an essential part of early childhood development. By Reading and sharing stories it helps children to learn:
- Sounds, words & language;
- Develop early literacy skills;
- Spark children’s imagination;
- Stimulate curiosity; and
- To value books and stories.
The story “Tiddalick the frog who caused a flood” by Robert Roennfeldt, is about children being connected to their world and being respectful of their environment and its resources.
We purposely chose this story for our “Empowering Our Youth” Indigenous program, because it exposes the children to our Indigenous culture and promotes knowledge and respect.
Developing children’s skillsets
After we read the story, we laminated a diorama of the story with pictures of all the animals in the story. The children were invited to pick one of the animal pictures in the story to act out. We role played the story over and over until each child had a turn acting out a different animal.
Children in this age group can have particularly short attention spans. Short, engaging activities is key to keeping their attention. Narrating and role playing stories helps children to develop their listening skills and increase their focus abilities.
The Main theme
In the Dolphins room we have been focusing on being kind to our friends and giving a helping hand to our friends when needed. “Tiddalick the frog who caused a flood” promotes teachings of:
- Working together -to problem solve and teaming up to accomplish even the hardest of tasks;
- The importance of our water supply- to use it wisely or it can be taken away;
- The value of our environment – the need to nourish it and it’s resources or we won’t have any;
- Friendships- being mindful; and helping out a friend or animal in need; and
- Behaviour- making good choices with sharing and the cause and effect of greediness.
And finally, the story illuminates is the children’s exposure to diversity and our indigenous culture. The indigenous culture is a very colourful one which has a number of unique lessons that children can benefit from, taught in a way that interests and entertains children.
That’s all this month from Miss Jodie, Miss Sabrina and the Dolphin (Gwong) children
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