Young children know how to use signs to get their message across .

One Monday morning, at the making table Euan very carefully placed a cork to the end of an icy pole stick and attached it with lots of sticky tape.

‘It’s a pipe,’ he said, as he put it in his mouth.  When the other children saw it they all wanted one.

‘My dad smokes a pipe’, said Euan.

‘My Dad, and Grandpa, and Great Grandpa smoke a pipe!’ said his friend, Fred. Later, when I talked to Fred’s Mum, she said that none of them smoked at all – let alone a pipe. Fred had created a story by imagining these three close people were pipe-smokers, and he used them as characters in his story. Continue reading →