Princess and The Pea Early Years Eyfs Planning Ideas for Preschool
by The princess and the Pea is an excellent themed topic for early years and literacy learning. Communication, Language, writing and literacy can all be covered through this traditional fairytale topic. Here are some EYFS literacy planning ideas to get you started!
· Ask the children plenty of open questions about the story. When the girl knocked at the door, she didn’t look like a real princess – why do you think this was?
· Make a small world area to develop their retelling of the Princess and the Pea. Use figures to represent the queen, king, prince and princesses. Washing up sponges or cloths can be cut to size to make the bedding and finer cloth to make some sheets. Use dolls house furniture including a bed. If you have a play castle then this is idea but think outside the box by adding some smaller construction materials like wooden blocks so that children can build their own castle for the story.
· In order to engage boys and to make the tale more appealing to the batman fans in your class – concentrate on the aspects of the castle. Talk about the structure of the castle, the bats that flew around it at night and the heroic aspects of the Prince in the story.
· Play around with the idea of modifying the story – read the traditional story book and then present your own version – the princess and the cabbage/apple/peanut. Children love to hear variations on a tale and find it fun to add in their own ideas. This will help them with their own creative writing process as they realise they can make up their own versions of traditional fairytales.
· Use technology to watch a video version of the Princess and the Pea. There are several versions available on the internet and will bring the story to life through animation.
· Take photographs of the small world play at various stages and in them up for display. You can annotate them or ask the children to write captions to explain which part of the story the photographs relate to.
· Give children the opportunity to make their own Princess and the Pea books. Use zig-zag, shaped or regular paper. For children who are at the emergent stage of writing, ask them to choose one part of the story and make several full books from their efforts.
As with any literacy activity, if you want children to read and write successfully it is vital that you immerse them in the subject and show them many different ways to approach retelling the fairytale.
Other helpful EYFS Planning ideas and resources on other themed topics can be found below:
The Tiger who came to Tea – Early Years Planning Guide
Weather themed topic Early Years Foundation Stage planning ideas
Chinese New Year Planning in the EYFS Early Years themed topic
Windy Day planning ideas EYFS Early Years topic theme
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