With the Fourth Great Story, the journey through time continues. We invite the children to recall how Earth formed, how plants and animals came, and at last, when the Earth was ready for them, humans came. We learned about the new discoveries they made such as fire, the wheel, and toolmaking. We wonder if they would have come up with names for things to communicate with each other. We know that they used pictures to tell stories as these still exist.

After they had been exploring Earth for a very, very long time, the need arose to record the growing body of knowledge they were accumulating. Thus, the Fourth Great Story tells the children of one of humanity’s most amazing creations – written language, describing it as a solution invented to enable us to communicate with each other, share ideas, and document history, not just face to face, but over time and distance. It traces the development of the written alphabet from pictographs to early alphabets, the invention of the printing press, right up to the present. Together we explore and ponder the impact these shifts had, and continue to have, for the way we communicate and interact with each other.

As the history of writing timeline is unfurled, we uncover early cave paintings, ancient civilisations – the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and how all contributed to the language we use today.

The story aims to inspire an interest in writing, reading, and communication in general. Some ideas and skills that can be connected to this story are:

• Historical research
• Sharing of ideas and discoveries
• Exploring languages
• Different alphabets and scripts, pictographs, hieroglyphics
• Making paper
• Calligraphy
• Codes and crypts
• Exploring writing instruments, typewriters, history of computers, etc.
• Studying plants and their uses inspired by the papyrus plant
• Debates
• Acting
• Presentations
• Filmmaking

Questions arise…

• When/Who invented paper?
• What did people use before paper was invented?
• How do you change a feather into a writing quill?
• We sharpen our pencils; do you have to sharpen quills?
• When was the first graphite pencil made?