Anytime is a good time for a book or story! Try to share at least one book or story each day.
Parents these days turn to the convenience given by technology to send their kids to sleep. Well, parents admit it. It is effortless for children to fall asleep after watching their favorite cartoons or a video. These things can be considered an easy pleasure of childhood, but nothing really compares to the beauty of storytelling to your kids. How much time do you spend telling stories with your child as a parent?
Storytelling plays a vital part in the overall development of your preschooler. Whether it is as simple as sharing a funny story about your day or talking about your childhood, storytelling offers various advantages to kids.
Look at the list below and learn the benefits of storytelling for children.
Benefit #1. Young kids love listening to stories. When you invest adequate time in storytelling, you instill virtues your kids can carry with them as they grow old. Tell them stories with meaningful messages or characters whose values they can emulate. Taking time to do this teaches valuable lessons to children and helps them learn about kindness, wisdom, honesty, compassion, and more.
Benefit #2. Boosts their listening skills. It can be challenging to hold a child’s attention for a long time. Many children find it hard to concentrate on something for an extended period. They either do more talking, or butt in, or their minds wander somewhere else. However, storytelling with your kid can help improve their listening skills. They will learn to increase their focus or become more attentive to a particular topic.
Benefit #3. Fosters children’s imagination. When kids listen to a story, it makes them imagine the plot, characters, setting, etc. It is way different from watching something on a screen. Storytelling encourages kids’ imaginations to run wild as the story unfolds. They can imagine the story however they want it to look in their heads. It can even make them open to new ideas and enhance their creativity.
Benefit #4. Increases their cultural understanding. Telling stories opens the eyes of young children to new things – places, cultures, and traditions. It makes them imagine being in the position of the story’s characters, which develops their empathy as they try to understand their actions.
Benefit #5. Enhances their communication skills. Reading and telling stories to kids can increase their ability to express themselves. It encourages them to communicate their feelings, thoughts, and ideas. When storytelling, encourage your little one to ask questions or discuss their views. As you continue to allow storytelling activities with your child, he will have a broader vocabulary as he picks up new words.
Benefit #6. Help sharpen memory. Storytelling is an excellent way to hone your kid’s memory. When you read your daughter or son a story, you can do a review or ask them to recall some of the story’s details. Ask your child questions and see how much information they can remember.
What kind of books to read with your kid?
As a broad rule, young kids often enjoy songs, books, and stories with good rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. One of the ways that kids learn is through rhyme and repetition.
Choose books that are the correct length for your child and that match your child’s changing interests. An excellent example of these books is Mona’s Mitten: A Story To Move To by Orliczky. As this is a book to move to, you will find physical activities going along with the story on each page. Through Orliczky’s work as a licensed physical therapist and a certified practitioner of the gentle, functional Feldenkrais method, the author wanted to use this story to encourage physical activity to many children who spend too much time sitting. They start reluctantly strapped to car seats, high chairs, and strollers. Later, they sit in front of the television or PC or with bent necks texting on their cell phones.
Kids learn about themselves and their world through movement and develop the strength, flexibility, coordination, balance, posture, and healthy body weight needed to reach goals and fulfill their dreams.
By adding exercises to the pages of her book, she wanted to inspire children to have fun stretching their muscles and imagination.
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