Kid Snippets

I have been watching these Kid Snippets, and I cannot stop laughing.

 

As always, I can't help but think about the implications this has for Early Childhood Education.  How can we get children to use language creatively?  How an we encourage storytelling in the early years and beyond?

This almost seems like a new version of Vivian Gussin Paley's work, writing down children's story dictations and then having children dramatize them later on.  I don't think that adults doing it inhibits creativity - it probably makes the stories even more vivid for children.

Celebrating children's stories is incredibly important if we want them to be readers and writers, but I think there is also a certain confidence that comes from sharing stories and seeing the pleasure people get from good storytelling.  I'm remembering a student I had a few years ago who, at the age of four, would create books that would have children and adults in stitches!  He understood how to tell a humorous story, and he would spend all of choice time crafting them and truly looked forward to the end of the day, when we would share our stories.

I love looking back on videos of children telling me their stories - it is as informative and intriguing as watching children at play.  This is one of my favorites from a few years ago.

Do you have a creative way of supporting children's storytelling in the classroom?