Retell The Story

Nurture the skills to read happily ever after by acting out stories from a favourite book with your little one.

You Will Need:

A favourite book
Puppets, dress-up clothes and stuffed animals

Doing The Activity:

Talk with your little one about what their favourite story is and engage with them as to why and what they like about it. Maybe it is a specific character, or a specific part of the book that they find exciting etc.

Using puppets, dress-up clothes, stuffed animals and other toys, recreate the characters and setting of your child's favourite book. Then join in with re-enacting their favourite scene. Spark the imagination by introducing new characters or presenting a new problem for them to overcome.

How this supports knowledge and development:

Engaging your little one in story retelling through dramatic play is a fun way to strengthen their spoken language and literacy skills.

In addition to reading to your little one, pretend play and story retelling are excellent language activities for children that will strengthen vocabulary while developing expressive and creative skills.

Retelling stories helps children to focus on structural elements, encouraging the child to explain characters, events, and plots. By talking and choosing your little ones favourite story book will mean that they will become familiar with the language that is used and will also become aware of non-story-related receptive language.