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Philosophy in Year 2 – Grandad’s Secret Giant

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Cover of Grandad's Secret Giant. Children's written statements including 'Not real we would of saw him.' Adult's written key words including 'magic pot', 'monsters', 'giant'.

How can we use children’s wonderings to shape P4C sessions? Here’s an example of a lesson where this worked well:

The Year 2 class had been reading Grandad’s Secret Giant by David Litchfield. After a quick voice warm-up, we started the philosophy by asking the children What was interesting or important in the story?

It emerged that some of them were wondering about whether the giant was real or not. So we asked these questions during the session:

Is the giant real? How do you know?

How do we know if something is real?

Can you think of some things that are not real?

The children said things like:

He can’t be real because they couldn’t see him.

I know if something is real, because it can move.

They had started to think both creatively and critically about the concept of ‘real’.