Age range: 3-5

This activity aims to show parents what a difference they can make to their child's language and literacy skills. Learning that is relevant to skills needed in school can take place when children are involved in everyday routines and interactions at home.

Storytelling can be a really fun activity that helps children to develop their imagination and their own understanding of the world. Listening to stories and telling their own stories allows children to conceptualise how a story works (beginning, middle, end) whilst using and hearing the sounds of different words helps them when they start to read.

This activity uses a real cuddly toy sharing his experience with his friend (the child who owns him) to invite other children to do the same. It is inspired by the well-known activity ‘Take teddy home for the weekend’ (which is commonly part of preschool practice) and adapted to have a focus on language, and sharing within a parent support group.

The activity:

First, using the interactive content labelled "My Teddy- Cemil", show parents the example of what Cemil gets up to with his friend, Ayca, who he lives with.

This is used to stimulate the creation of a Teddy ‘diary’. This can happen during the session, with parents working together. If children are present during the session, parents and children can work together. At home, parents can create stories about Teddy together with their child and then share those with the group of parents during the following session. 

You could create a forum for families to add their pictures, some text and video-files to tell us their Teddy stories.  Using the image and text tool, parents can upload photos their children took of their child's toy doing various activities. Together they could write about what the toy is doing in the picture. They could also up-load a little video of their toy, wiht the child talking in the background to tell us what is happening. See an example on the following page, where Cemil has written his letter and made his own presentation with Ayca.