Felt Stories
Behind the smiles and laughter of storytime, serious work is being done. Your child is learning and practicing many different skills. But which ones exactly? Let’s walk through the felt story The Three Billy Goats Gruff and find out.
Billy goats of graduating sizes cross a bridge one-by-one. Counting and scale as well as vocabulary like billy goat, troll, and underneath practice literacy and math skills. The goats’ hooves make a pleasant trip-trap, trip-trap, trip-trap sound which is not only super fun to say but a way to practice rhythm, the precursor to understanding that words are made up of separate parts or sounds.
After the smallest billy goat persuades the mean troll (who wants him as a snack) to wait for his larger, plumper brother, a child wonders what will happen next. Can the second goat keep from being eaten, too? Wondering is like predicting which is a crucial narrative skill. Cause and effect, illustrated by the troll being tossed into the river by the biggest billy goat as a result of his bad behavior, is another narrative skill. Your child might use critical thinking skills to develop their own plan of escape in this situation.
Lastly, because felt stories are so engaging, they build on children’s love of reading even if they’re “only looking at the pictures” which in this case are the felt pieces. If you act out the story at home, they’ll even strengthen their sequencing skills.
Story Time is serious work. Let the play begin!