Speaking the Language of Nature: Reconceptualizing Early Literacy in Telling the Stories from the Garden

This article describes how storytelling can develop early literacy skills and focus young children on nature. Over a nine-month period in two program years, children, parents, and educators at St. Andrews United Church Preschool in Calgary, Alberta worked collaboratively to tell and write The Stories from the Garden. These Stories from the Garden exemplify a holistic approach to literacy by connecting learning experiences focused on the natural world, the lifeworld of the classroom, interrelationships between the children, teachers and parents to the text itself.