ABSTRACT
Stimulating And Supporting Play based on stories set in past times raises a number of questions which we explore in this chapter. Story is central to children's developing awareness of past times; from a very young age children encounter stories from the past. Some of these stories are about real people and events. Others are make-believe – fairy stories. So how do children gradually come to know what is a ‘real’ story and what is a ‘made-up’ story? How do they come to know that Cinderella didn't exist but Florence Nightingale did? The fact that ‘true’ stories about the past are often vehicles for literacy and told in the Literacy Hour, alongside fairy stories, possibly compounds the problem for young children. Are they simply dependent on an adult telling them which stories really happened? Do children forget? Should adults help children to differentiate between ‘true’ and ‘made-up’ stories?
