Early Years – The Power of Stories

As a unique form of children’s literature, picture books are “the presentation of children’s culture” and an important part of children’s own world.

Children could access their inner world through picture books. As the first reading materials in children’s life, picture books satisfy their natural curiosity with the lively and interesting content, and open the door to the vast world for them. At the same time, it is also a window for children to know themselves and the world, and a spiritual place for children to place their feelings and emotions. With the help of picture books, children could release their emotions and meet the needs of their own psychological development.

 

Children are enjoying the picture books in the reading corner.

 

Picture books are also recognized as the most suitable books for children to read. Excellent picture books do not dictate plainly. To make children feel happy, many picture books are produced according to the cognitive ability, psychological characteristics and development needs of children at different ages. The theme forms are rich and diverse, and the purpose of early education can be achieved unknowingly.

reading corner

 

Some picture books skillfully integrate cognitive function into the story, allowing children to inadvertently acquire all kinds of knowledge in interesting stories, such as the classic picture book <The Very Hungry Caterpillar>. Through the story, children can recognize various fruits and food, know the colors, learn the numbers……

 

Let’s follow the mini diary of our Toddlers – Panda class to review their year of reading and creation.

 

“Who We Are”

Since the beginning of the school year, our panda class children read a lot of classic picture books autonomously, or under the guidance of the teacher. In the first unit of “Who We Are” , we read Mr. Eric Carle’s classic picture book <From Head to Toe>, learned the body parts and face organs of ourselves, and at the same time, we knew a lot of small animals from it… Later, according to the picture book, we held some related activities.

A corner of EY classroom.

 

 “How We Express Ourselves”

In Unit 2, we began to explore the theme of “How We Express Ourselves”. Based on the knowledge we had in Unit 1, we started to explore the emotions and feelings expressed by different facial expressions and body language. Children at the age of 2~ 3 have limited expression skills, but their basic senses are much more sensitive than older children or even adults. When reading the book< Let’s Make Faces>, children were impressed by the happy faces, sad faces, silly faces… created from different materials. Children were full of curiosity and empathy towards it. In the initial stage of reading picture books, children often imitate the faces with different emotions in the books, so as to find their inner emotional resonance.

We were reading <Let’s Make Faces> together.

Grace was making a goofy face with teacher together.

Jayden,Yoonwoo and Cissie has different expression of the “goofy face”.

When we were talking about Daddy’s face, Yoonwoo said: “my daddy is very tall.” and showed us the height with his raising hands. Sarah also raised her hands and said: “my daddy is also very tall”.

When the teacher asked: ”How does Mommy’s face look like?”, our children started to think about it.

 

Our Creation

In the subsequent story expansion activities, children often imitate the plots in the book, using the different open-ended materials in the classroom, piecing together their own understanding of happy face, sad face, Daddy’s face, Mommy’s face, monster’s face…… This process also helped them gain insight into the underlying emotions expressed by different facial expressions.

The teacher was introducing the open-ended materials to inspire children’s creative ideas.

Jayden was making ‘a sad face’, he used the translucent buttons to represent the tears on the face.

“My mom’s eyes are bright,” said Keira, who chose two sparkly pebbles to represent her Mom’s eyes.

“My Mommy has the long hair”, said Dora.

 

Our Picture Book

In the end of the activity, we decided to make something special. Why not create our own emotional picture book? We collected more open-ended materials and allowed children to freely piece together faces with different emotions in their minds. The teacher sorted all the children’s “creations” into a collection, and handed them over to an agency to print them into books. That’s how the first picture books of each of our young authors were born!

Each book was signed with the children’s own names. It will be the most special picture book on their bookshelves, because it comes from the heart of their age – two or three years old.  Hope this little book will accompany their growth. Many years later, when the grown children turn to it again, they may have forgotten the details, but if the books could encourage them to keep their original intention of being good at observation and being brave in their future life, it will be a very nice growth gift for them.

 

Every child is a born creator. As our teachers and parents, we should record and collect their works timely, as well as generously offer them the encouragement.