Act It Out — Story Acting and Re-enactment

Borrow Vivian Paley’s classic classroom practice for the living room: the child tells you a story, you write it down word for word, and then the whole family acts it out, with the child as author and director. On other days, act out a favorite picture book or fairy tale instead. Turning an idea into a told story and then a performance is how young children think out loud — and how fantasy becomes the shared, sequenced language that reading and writing are built on.

  1. Invite a story: “Tell me a story and I’ll write it down.” Scribe it faithfully — don’t tidy or improve it. A story can be one sentence (“The dog flew to the moon”). That’s fine.

  2. Read it back, then act it out. The author casts the parts (“you be the dog, I’ll be the moon”), and you follow their directions.

  3. Use the floor as a stage and mime the props — no costumes or set needed. The child can star, direct from the side, or narrate; let them choose their level of exposure.

  4. On other days, re-enact a loved book or fairy tale: recall what happens first, next, and last, share out the roles, and play it through.

  5. Keep the told stories in a notebook so favorites can be performed again — and welcome the child’s changes when they re-tell them.

Variation: alternate original dictated stories with book re-enactments. Add a story-starter object pulled from a bag, or a “guest character” to shake up the plot. Let the child rotate through being author, actor, and narrator on different days.

Requirements

  • Space: A clear patch of floor as a stage; no special space needed
  • Surface: Floor; a rug can mark the stage
  • Materials: Optional paper and pencil to scribe the story; optional simple props, though miming works perfectly
  • Participants: At least two — a scribe and one or more actors — though a child can narrate while you act; a small group makes richer casts
  • Supervision: Light, and always led by the child; follow their pace and never push a performance

Rationale & Objective

“Act It Out” is the home version of Vivian Gussin Paley’s storytelling–story-acting practice, developed over decades at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (Paley, 1990, 2004): a child dictates a story, an adult scribes it, and the group acts it out with the author directing. Paley’s insight was that “fantasy and storytelling are the abstract thinking of the young” — turning a lived or imagined idea into a told narrative and then a performance makes the child sequence events, hold a story arc, take a character’s view, and convert private fantasy into shared, decontextualized language, which is the bridge to literacy. This maps almost word for word onto the EYFS goals of inventing, adapting and recounting narratives and of retelling stories in their own words.

The empirical support here is the strongest in this set. Nicolopoulou and colleagues (2015) ran a year-long storytelling–story-acting program with 149 low-income preschoolers and found gains in narrative comprehension and oral language, emergent literacy, and social competence including self-regulation. It is a single, well-designed study (mostly age 3–4, in classrooms, not homes), so it cannot carry a universal causal claim — and Lillard et al. (2013) rightly caution that the narrative and language benefits of pretend play, while plausible, are not yet proven uniquely causal. Treated honestly as well-supported and theory-aligned, story acting targets this subdomain’s examples of sustaining a role and collaborating with peers, and supports GOLD Objectives 18 (responds to books) and 36 (explores drama) and HighScope KDI 43.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: acts out actions in the moment (‘I’m a lion — roar!’) without a story they can re-tell; if dictating, offers a label or a single event rather than a sequence, and needs a lot of prompting to say what happens
  • Developing: dictates or re-enacts a simple linear sequence — ‘first… then…’ — with a recognizable beginning and end but little conflict; takes one role and stays in it, and can retell a familiar story’s gist with prompts
  • Proficient: produces a story (original or a re-enacted book) with a clear problem and resolution, assigns roles to family members, stays in character through the scene, and uses story language (‘once upon a time,’ ‘suddenly’)
  • Advanced: invents and adapts multi-event stories with cause and effect and character motivation; directs others (‘you be the wolf, hide here’), revises in response to the acting (’no — say it sadder’), blends remembered book elements with original invention, and shows audience awareness

Safety Notes

  • Keep it low-pressure and never coerced — a shy child can dictate without acting, narrate from the side, or take a silent role, and a child who wants no audience shouldn’t have one
  • Set ground rules for any acted fighting, falling, or chasing (no real contact, soft or mimed props, feet on the floor) and check that furniture used as scenery is stable
  • Scary or intense themes (being chased, getting lost, defeating a monster) are developmentally normal and usually healthy to play out; stay attuned and be ready to pause or reframe if a child becomes genuinely distressed rather than playfully scared
  • Avoid cords or scarves tight around the neck, and small choke-able props if a toddler is nearby

Hints

  • Playfulness: throw yourself into your role — a wholehearted, slightly over-the-top wolf or weeping princess tells the child this is fun and safe, and invites them to commit too.
  • Sustain interest: alternate original dictated stories with re-enacting a favorite book; keep a ‘story journal’ to perform old favorites again; and rotate the child through author, actor, and narrator so it never feels like the same activity twice.
  • Common mistake: ‘improving’ or correcting the child’s story (its logic, grammar, or order), over-prompting until the plot is really yours, prizing a polished show over the child’s authorship, forcing a reluctant child to perform, or — in re-enactments — insisting on perfect fidelity to the book rather than welcoming the child’s own adaptations.
  • Limited space / no equipment: this needs nothing at all — no props, costumes, or stage; dictation needs only a willing listener (and optionally paper), and a story can be acted out on any patch of floor with imaginary props.
  • Cross-domain: sequencing, vocabulary, and story grammar feed emergent literacy; cooperating on roles and waiting your turn build social skill and self-regulation; voicing characters develops perspective-taking; and authoring and directing grow confidence and agency.
  • Progression: act out a single action → dictate or retell a one-event story → a ‘first/then/last’ sequence with a scribe → a story with a problem and a resolution that the family acts out → an invented or adapted multi-scene story the child directs and revises.

Sources

  • Paley, V. G. (1990). The Boy Who Would Be a Helicopter: The Uses of Storytelling in the Classroom. Harvard University Press
  • Paley, V. G. (2004). A Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play. University of Chicago Press
  • Nicolopoulou, A., Cortina, K. S., Ilgaz, H., Cates, C. B. & de Sá, A. B. (2015). “Using a narrative- and play-based activity to promote low-income preschoolers’ oral language, emergent literacy, and social competence.” Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 31, 147–162
  • Stagnitti, K. & Lewis, F. M. (2015). “Quality of pre-school children’s pretend play and subsequent development of semantic organization and narrative re-telling skills.” International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 17(2), 148–158
  • Lillard, A. S., Lerner, M. D., Hopkins, E. J., Dore, R. A., Smith, E. D. & Palmquist, C. M. (2013). “The impact of pretend play on children’s development: A review of the evidence.” Psychological Bulletin, 139(1), 1–34
  • UK EYFS — Expressive Arts and Design — Being Imaginative and Expressive ELG (invent, adapt and recount narratives and stories with peers and their teacher)
  • UK EYFS — Literacy — Comprehension ELG (retell stories and narratives using their own words and recently introduced vocabulary)
  • Teaching Strategies GOLD — Objective 36 (explores drama) and Objective 18 (comprehends and responds to books and other texts)
  • HighScope KDI 43 (pretend play, Creative Arts)