Make a simple storytelling basket for preschoolers and young school age children to retell their favourite fairy tales and picture books using toys and props! A wonderful way to practise crucial early literacy skills and develop story-rich language too.

We are continuing on in our series of Storytelling Baskets for preschoolers and young school age children, with another classic traditional tale of The Three Billy Goats Gruff! Two of my girls have ben learning about fairytales as part of their nursery and school projects, so we thought we’d set some of these up to support the stories they were reading there.

What I love about creating storytelling baskets is that they are very simple to set up and rarely require any extra making, apart from very simple additions. This is especially true if you’ve got a lot of kids, have ever been a teacher and/or are a bit of a hoarder like me! (See, it has its benefits!)

In this Three Billy Goats Gruff Storytelling Basket we placed:

3 realistic goat toys (similar to these)

A moshi monsters toy to represent the troll (anything will do!)

One arch from our wooden rainbow toy for the bridge. You could build one from Lego!

A simple felt play-mat I made previously using a cardboard base and details stuck on with glue. See where we used it on a Spring themed activity here.

We parted this story-telling basket with this favourite version of the traditional tale, which has great illustrations and such fabulous, repetitive language. Having already read the story together, they used the story props to re-tell in their own words. Sometimes they turned the pages of the book as they played but more often than not they used them independently.

There was lots of storybook language and they retold in the correct sequence, swapping to use a new goat for each part of the story as it developed. There were lots of added sound effects for the roaring troll and trip-trapping hooves over the bridge! I managed to video some of the play and must find a way to upload it here for you to watch too.

See our many other STORY-TELLING BASKETS for more ideas and ways to play!

You may enjoy browsing the LITERACY PLAY archives where there are lots of storytelling activities, phonics fun ideas and early writing games too.

See our LITERACY pinterest board too! Follow Anna @ The Imagination Tree’s board Literacy Play Ideas on Pinterest.

What they are learning as they play:

literacy: story telling, retelling in the correct sequence, using characters and main events in a familiar story, comparing versions of traditional tales, language and vocabulary development

creativity: using props to support imaginative play, storytelling and characterisation [This post contains some Amazon affiliate links. Thank you for your support!]