Princess and The Pea Early Years Eyfs Planning Ideas for Preschool

There are plenty of early year’s education activities suitable on the theme of Hans Christian Anderson’s well known fairytale ‘The Princess and the Pea’.

The Princess and the Pea is a fascinating fairytale for Early Years and preschool children and like all of the best fairytales is surprisingly simple. It makes an excellent EYFS themed topic unit and can cover all areas of learning in the EYFS framework.

Planning ideas around the ‘Princess and the Pea’ should begin with getting to know the fairytale.

Literacy planning in the EYFS and preschool is often the biggest challenge for teachers and practitioners but using the Princess and the Pea fairytale as a themed topic should be enjoyable for adults and children alike.

Here are some great early year’s literacy planning ideas to get you started.

Communication, language and literacy (CLLD)

·         Try telling the story to the children without using a book. Story telling is a great way to show children that we don’t always need a book to help us tell a fairy tale. You can concentrate on facial expressions, adding in your own exciting vocabulary and move in and around the children so that they really feel they are part of the traditional fairy tale.

·         Tell the story using props or puppets. You do not have to have fancy puppets – stick puppets will do the job just as well and prompt the children to make their own character puppets in the creative area later on. Props like pictures will help the children visually build the sequence of the story in their mind and having a dried pea or some sponges to build the mattresses on a bed made of wooden blocks will help to keep the children’s interest.

·         Make your own simplified version of the tale on a word document to create a book to share at story time. Use clip art or images to illustrate the stages of the story. This way, you can concentrate on making sure that you have lots of high frequency key words, CVC words and words related to the letters and sounds phonics phases.

·         Read the story as a group and block out some key words. You can block out the whole word or part of a word depending on the level your children are at in reading with support.