Early childhood education has multicultural classes that include children from different language backgrounds. For this reason, it is important to create educational environments that could be effective and productive for all children. Narrative can serve as an important educational tool for language development and can enhance the school readiness of native and non-native children. The intensification of the narrative strategies that focus on how the stories are organized through interconnected facts is important and can be applied through multiple ways. One of them could be constructive play with various materials and flexible use of classroom space, which provides important building opportunities that often encourage the development of imaginative scenarios and stories through which children engage in dialogues and narratives. The purpose of this research intervention was to develop the narrative ability of preschool children using constructive play with open-ended materials in native and non-native children of typical language development and children at risk for learning difficulties. The research question was how constructive play with open-ended materials in combination with the use of story grammar encourages the production of narratives and contributes to the improvement of the narrative abilities of children with typical language development, both native and non-native and children with signs of learning difficulties. The sample consisted of two experimental groups and one control group of preschool children (4-6 years old) from three kindergartens in Thessaloniki, Greece. The project lasted 3 months and was divided into four phases. For the detection of children at risk of learning difficulties, the Inventory Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) adapted in Greek was used before the creation of the target groups. For the initial and final evaluation of the children's narratives, an observation key, regarding the structural components of the narrative, and a diary were used by the researchers. Data analysis was conducted using qualitative analysis with a productive method following predefined categories and subcategories. The results showed that through constructive play with open-ended materials and the use of story grammar, narrative ability was enhanced in both native and non-native children and children at risk in experimental groups. Specifically, all children seemed to gradually enrich their narratives with more components, and by the final assessment at the end of the intervention, they were creating stories that contained all the structural components of the narrative, except the time component. In contrast, in the control group, where neither open-ended materials nor story grammar were used, no differences were observed between the initial and final measurement. The integration of narrative structural elements through visualized construction steps, utilizing open-ended materials that were used in the experimental classes greatly affected the ability of both native and non-native children to create narratives with more structural elements, compared to their initial assessment and the control class.

Keywords: Narrative ability, constructive play, early childhood education, learning difficulties, multicultural classroom.