Enabling Environments: Literacy - Go live!

Everyone has run out of imagination on the planet of Squiggly Diggly so Hootah the alien has come to earth and taken up residence at the Discover Children’s Story Centre in Stratford, east London, where children are busy helping him to create new stories to take home.

Discover’s newly refurbished indoor and outdoor environments are full of things to fire up children’s curiosity and imaginations – from a pirate ship to a London taxi, a castle puppet theatre to a monster slide, and a cave with sounds and lights. They can climb into the clouds to Hootah’s special Observatron, go on a sky walk, snuggle in a reading nook or make stories in the Story Cloud Factory.

‘Discover was the first story centre in the UK, set up in 2003 by a group of local parents who wanted to increase literacy in the area and get children interested in stories and storytelling,’ says marketing officer Sophie Waddy. ‘Children, aged from babies up to Key Stage 2, love visiting the Story World and exploring the large interactive play spaces.

‘Our trained Story Builders welcome school and nursery groups for storytelling sessions and help them to use story-building techniques – investigating character, setting and plot – to create their own stories. By sparking children’s imaginations at a young age we hope to create an ongoing love of language, literature and stories.’

SPACE ADVENTURE

Children from George Carey Church of England Primary School in Barking are keen to assist Hootah with his quest and, assisted by a Story Builder, are enthusiastically making up a story for him to take home. They have gone on a space adventure, had fun going fast down a slide and made puppets out of wooden spoons. Now they are letting their imaginations go wild and suggesting ideas to collectively make up a fantastical tale about Furious Victor, a big grumpy giant who roars and likes to eat people and fight dragons.

Prompted by some careful questioning by the Story Builder, they describe his red spiky hair and blue shirt that has just been washed, and vote with their thumbs down to decide that he is a bad giant – ‘A big, big, big, big giant with giant teeth’. The children discuss what makes the giant bad and demonstrate his angry roar.

The Story Builder draws out from the children a setting for their story – a cold, dark, cave – and they move on to visualising what Furious Victor does when he wakes up in the morning. Children animatedly pretend to scoop spider webs from the imaginary cave walls and catch giant rats. They’ll take their story back to school where they may elaborate on it further, write it down, act it out or use their new story-building skills to develop other stories. Meanwhile, Hootah will have another gripping tale to share with his fellow aliens back on Squiggly Diggly.

IMAGINARY WORLD

From one imaginary world to another, children can also transport themselves into ‘The Fantastic World of Dr Seuss’ by exploring Discover’s latest exhibition, running until July 2017. The characters and experiences from some of his popular books, including The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax, Green Eggs and Ham and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! have been brought to life so that children can be immersed in the fun rhyming language and playfulness of the stories.

Visiting children can dress up as Thing 1 and Thing 2, go to the Cat in the Hat’s house, play music with the Boom Band, explore a dark train tunnel and stroke fluffy purple-and-yellow Truffula Trees. Under-threes enjoy joining the Story Builders on an adventure to find the rarest and most exciting eggs to make an amazing breakfast, inspired by Scrambled Eggs Super!, and investigate what wonderful sounds they can make, like in Mr Brown Can Moo! Can You?.

‘The exhibition is a really fun space where Dr Seuss’s books come to life,’ says Ms Waddy. ‘Children can play with language and rhyme, discover new books by Dr Seuss and link the stories to wider issues, such as the environmental issues touched on by chopping down trees in The Lorax.’

CASE STUDY

‘We’ve visited the Discover Children’s Story Centre a number of times,’ says Jackie Defalco, manager of Playshack Nursery in Rotherhithe, London. ‘The children always love hearing about Hootah, acted out by a Story Builder, and enjoy helping him to find stories.

‘They especially like the outdoor environment, which encourages a lot of imaginative play – acting out stories on the pirate ship and space ship. Many of our children have English as a second language, so the visits are good for encouraging their language and literacy, and support what we do at nursery. We encourage parents to accompany us on trips and like Discover because it gives them useful ideas to take home – not just sharing books, but making up and acting out stories, doing craft activities related to books and using props such as puppets to tell stories.

‘The day after our visit we like to encourage the children to tell us a story which we’ll write down and make into a book along with photos from the trip and their drawings. We then put it in a story bag with a Hootah toy for the children.’

OUT AND ABOUT

Outreach sessions are available for EYFS, KS1 and KS2 children. Facilitated by a Story Builder, children can explore books, build stories and engage in craft-related activities.

Discover’s previous exhibition, Michael Rosen’s ‘Bear Hunt, Chocolate Cake and Bad Things’, is now on tour in the North West of England. Children can go inside a giant chocolate cake, brave the Bad Things in the Dread Shed and go on their very own Bear Hunt. It moved to Liverpool this month.

For further information, go to: www.discover.org.uk

ALTERNATIVELY…

At the museum

Bing Bunny creator Ted Dewan will be kicking off the new series of events for young children at the Story Musuem in Oxford. On 14 January, he will be presenting his books, talking about Bing’s CBeebies TV programmes and drawing live for toddlers.

The Story Museum, founded in 2003, celebrates story in all its forms and began by taking storytellers into schools and communities. Since 2009, this not-for-profit company and registered charity has been transforming a large dilapidated building in the centre of the city into an unusual museum with the help of authors, artists, teachers and volunteers.

The first phase of the development was completed three years ago, and saw the opening of its shop and café, new events and a major exhibition.

The goal is for the museum to become an international centre that will inspire present and future generations. Once complete, the museum will be open six days a week all year round and offer a varied programme of exhibitions and events. It then expects to attract 100,000 visitors a year.

For more about the museum and its events, visit: www.storymuseum.org.uk.

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