Please note: this article pre-dates the current National Curriculum and some content and references are outdated.

Story is the crucial factor in children’s awareness of past times in their ‘mythic’ phase of mental development, see page 4. Everyone loves a story, stories ‘open out fresh fields, the illimitable beckoning of horizons to imagination… picturing the facts, lapping around them like seas around the rocks upon the coast… essentially poetic.’ (rowse 1946: 53-4). Stories for children at the Foundation and Key Stage one take can take many forms and be presented in multiple genres and modes. there are family stories; stories about the distant past; fairy stories; myths and legends; stories about the rich and poor; kings, queens,