Published 29.09.2026
by Kids’ Own
by Kids’ Own
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A children's arts organisation and publishing house.
Our family literacy project Stories Together: Creative Family Literacy is continuing to explore the many ways that language, creativity and play can support learning. Led by artist Ruth Le Gear and writer Mary Branley, the sessions bring parents and children together through storytelling, songs, rhymes, art and making.
Ruth shares an update from the latest session at the Avalon Centre:
“We began with duplo, which has been really good for storytelling and opening up different ways of communicating and playing together. There is so much to be learned through play, and creativity is just as important as literacy in how children learn, express themselves and make sense of things.
Mary began singing and sharing some of the rhymes from the book Clotty, and then invited the other participants to share rhymes from their own languages. There is such a wonderful variation of languages in the room, and in the languages the children are moving between what is spoken at home, what they are learning and speaking in school, and Irish coming through as well.
We returned to geli printing, and some of the children began making images and stories connected to their nursery rhymes, including a wonderful duck with glasses. It was all very playful. The group feels much more comfortable together now, and there is a growing sense that people are comfortable making mistakes, trying things out and simply speaking, which feels really important.
We also sang together and continued using the blackboards for our special words of the week. Mary shared the lovely suggestion of listening to a song in English while also bringing the lyrics up on your phone and following along. These are such small, everyday things, but they can really help to bring language along quite significantly.
Next week we will begin working a little more towards the book. We are thinking about making accordion fold books and bringing together parts of what people have been making each week. We would really like to weave the nursery rhymes in people’s own languages through this, as that feels very important. We are also thinking about collaborative drawing, with parents and children working together, and continuing to use song as part of the sessions.”
Stories Together: Creative Family Literacy Through Art and Play is delivered by Kids’ Own in partnership with Family Resource Centre Sligo, with funding from SOLAS Learning Works – Adult Literacy for Life.
Read more about the project here: Stories Together