Sarah Dray, Placement Officer
The
‘Snuggle up with a story’ blog by Katie Crouch highlighted the power of books. Children have a natural love of stories with their inquisitive minds and endless questions. Where ever I worked in a nursery, the book corner was always my favourite spot– cosying up with the children to read a story, making the characters come to life and using the time to engage and ignite children’s imagination, confidence and language; story sharing was always quality time. It was wonderful to observe the quiet, shy children slowly build confidence and become involved with the story that we shared. At nursery or home, any time of day can be filled with a story, the book shelf should be stacked to the brim with books about wild beasts, dancing giraffes, lions that loved, ketchup that went on my cornflakes, dinosaurs and machinery – everything and anything that captures children’s imagination. It is important to remember (and there is plenty of research (Van Bergen et al. 2017) to remind us) that children need to be surrounded with books to be able to appreciate literature – just like us!
