Coffee Cans, Masks, and Story Boxes: Strategies for Integrating Drama and Storytelling into Early Childhood Learning

Jun 09, 2025

How can a coffee can help tell a story? Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Melissa Richardson uses an arts strategy experience called “Coffee Can Theater” to help children learn the elements of a story. She uses small props to represent the characters and the scenery. Using these manipulatives, children can retell and sequence the story in a hands-on way, or the class can use them together to create an entirely original story.

“It’s a great way for children to visualize and make concrete the story they’re hearing,” she says.

In addition to introducing characters and setting, Coffee Can Theater can also be used to, sort characters or setting elements by attribute, and reinforce foundational math concepts by asking questions like: “How many cows are there? How many pigs? How many animals in all? Which animal arrived first? Which animal came in second?”

Like Coffee Can Theater, arts experiences that draw upon elements of theater and storytelling are an effective way to enhance young children’s creativity, improve their communication, demonstrate their comprehension and listening skills, and boost their self-confidence. They can be integrated into learning across the curriculum, from literacy and STEM to social-emotional learning. Here are a few ideas you can try over the summer to stimulate at-home learning or add to your toolbox for the next school year:

Back-Pocket Masks: Exploring Emotions

Masks are used in theater to express specific character traits. Here, Wolf Trap Teaching Artist Paige Hernandez shows how teachers can encourage children to use imaginary masks to explore their emotions. Teachers can use this experience to create a story with three parts—a beginning, a middle, and an end—and ask them to select three emotions to portray. “How are you feeling today?” “What does that look like?” Determine the order of the emotions and practice that sequence.

Exploring Gravity Through Story Dramatization

Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Sue Trainer doesn’t use a coffee can to tell a story, instead, she’s created her own story box! I wonder what’s inside? Using small manipulatives, Trainor re-tells a children’s story and introduces the concept of gravity. Use the same experience to tell the next chapter of the story and ask children, “What happens next?”

Using Drama to Explore the Six Steps of Engineering

Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Christina Farrell uses drama to investigate and demonstrate the six steps of engineering. In this experience, she models asking children to use their imagination and their bodies as they work cooperatively to build a house and solve problems they encounter as they act out elements of the story. This six step engineering-based process includes identifying the issue, developing a plan, building it, testing it out, testing it again, and telling a friend.

To learn more arts-based strategies for the early childhood classroom or at-home learning, visit Wolf Trap’s digital resource library.