| Skill | Storytelling to Kids |
| Definition: | Children love hearing stories, whether it’s about your day, a memory, or something off a book. Storytelling is a great way to spend time with your kid and it offers a lot of benefits for both you and your child. Parents these days find it easier to put their children to bed after watching a favorite cartoon, than curling up in bed and reading out loud. What seems like a simple pleasure of childhood has many benefits attached to it, and it is important that you take out some time each night to read to your children. Storytelling is the oldest form of teaching. It bonded the early human communities, giving children the answers to the biggest questions of creation, life, and the afterlife. Stories define us, shape us, control us, and make us. Not every human culture in the world is literate, but every single culture tells stories. |
| Purpose: | Why do we need to tell stories to children? Storytelling plays a very important role in the cognitive development of infants and young kids. Storytelling is an ancient and valuable art that extends around the globe. In this unit, students develop their own storytelling talents, apply the techniques of storytelling, create storytelling guides, and perform a story for an audience. This unit can be taught to an entire classroom or given as a self-directed extension activity. Each lesson is quite short, and they can easily be combined. |
| Description: | Storytelling plays a very important role in the cognitive development of infants and young kids. It helps improving key areas like memory and language skills, it sparks curiosity which increases the child’s imaginative skills, and it gives the child new perceptions to the world around them every single time. Reading stories from different cultures will open a child’s mind to the variation around them and create a deeper understanding of people. In fact, over the years, storytelling is a major means of passing on tradition and history to the next generations. Storytelling is also a really interactive and fun way to spend quality time with your kids which will thereby strengthen the bond you have with them. This will make them feel loved, cared for, and just a lot closer to you than before. |
| Knowledge: | Storytelling is a creative form of expression where imagination is translated into words. It requires interactive words and actions with variations in tone, to narrate a story that keeps the listeners hooked until the end. A good storyteller also encourages the listener’s active imagination, letting them become the co-creators of the tale. Storytelling can take various forms such as dance, puppetry, musicals, comedy, poetry, and more. It requires patience, persistence, and multiple trial-and-error attempts to master this skill. What kind of stories can you tell children? 1. Go back in time 2. Folktales from other cultures 3. Personal experience 4. Books you loved as a child 5. Your child’s interests Benefits Of Storytelling To Kids: 1. Instills virtues and morals in children: 2. Understanding cultures: 3. Improves listening skills: 4. Inspires curiosity: 5. Kindles imagination: I 6. Improves concentration: 7. Introduces new vocabulary: 8. Enhances the learning process: 9. Develops emotional intelligence: 10. Teaches empathy: 11. Improves communication: 12. Lowers stress and anxiety: 13. Sharpens memory: 14. Makes academic learning easier: 15. Encourage a budding storyteller: |
| Abilities: | How To Tell Stories To Children: Not knowing how to tell a story to a child can be frustrating, especially when your little one wants a bedtime story every night. Young minds are always exploring something, are bored easily and move from one topic to another so quickly that you struggle to catch up. 5 Easy Ways Of Narrating A Story: 1. Understand the listener: 2. Construct your message: 3. Include creative words: 4. Expressive style: 5. Timing: |
| Tips for teachers: | What are some alternative methods of storytelling you can adopt? There are a few more fun ways in which you can incorporate Storytelling with your kids. – Storytelling through videos – Interactive storytelling – Storytelling games a) String-along storytelling: Be seated in a group with your child. It can involve their friends or your family. Or, if you don’t have a group, you can just play this game between your child and you. Start off a story and only say about, one sentence. For example, “Once upon a time there lived a boy.” Then ask your kid to continue the story with one sentence and you’ll alternate turns this way. In a group, of course, everyone participates. b) Tale Twist: For this game, ask your child to combine any two of their favourite stories to form a meaningful new story. You can also ask them to take a classic story and add their own modern twist to it. Ask them how they would rewrite it. c) Picture-based storytelling: Show your child random pictures of any kind and ask them to build stories around each one. They can form a continuous story based on a bunch of pictures, too. Another way to do this kind of storytelling is by asking your kid to draw out a sequence of events and form a story. This one would work best with a group of your child’s friends. d) Object-based storytelling: Ask your kid or a group of your kid’s friends to go outside and collect any objects they think would make for a good story. They then come back with their bags of objects and sit around in a circle. Each object that a child puts forward, they have to form a part of the story’s scene with it. Each child takes turns to put forth an object and continue the story. e) Passers-by storytelling: This is one of my personal favorites because I, as an adult, do this all the time. When you’re in a vehicle with your child, point out random people doing different tasks and along with your child you can either discuss how you think they’re feeling, what their interests might be, what they must do for a living, etc; or you can consider them a character in a story and build a short story around them. |
| Sources / resources | Videos, readings… https://www.creativechildcare.com.au/storytelling-with-children https://www.mensaforkids.org/teach/lesson-plans/the-art-of-storytelling/ https://flintobox.com/blog/child-development/storytelling-children https://www.momjunction.com/articles/benefits-story-telling-for-kids_0036903/ https://medium.com/@yash.hsquare/importance-of-storytelling-in-child-development-b63593921a33 VIDEOS: https://youtu.be/F11E4S9fumw https://youtu.be/4LV3tdG-aGk |
Storytelling to Kids