QUALITY STORYTENTS

A resource for family, early childhood and community literacy workers

In the program, workers sometimes bring musical instruments for the children to play, and show them how to make twine bracelets and necklaces. Workers often skip, play cards or clapping games, or share bubbles or sidewalk chalk with the children. Each of these activities has a defensible ‘early literacy’ dimension (sequencing, symbolic representation, vocabulary enhancement, etc.), but for us they are also about quality relationships.

The children are allowed to help workers in the tents. Sometimes it is a child who writes up the attendance, or who passes around snack. For the children, also, the Storytent is about more than reading instruction. Some children use the program to meet common social needs. Some children use it as a source for reading materials. Some quite deliberately come to acquire or improve their reading skills. Most come for a variety of reasons, and reasons change as the summer goes on (Brown & Dryden, 2004).