Do you tell stories to your children? If not, I can assure you will start telling them from now. Have you ever noticed that you are on your phone watching or reading someone telling you about a wonderful experience at an amusement park or a trip? There was a short post on social media, in which the person was talking about his trip to Shimla, he said, it was an amazing experience near the queen of hills surrounded by the greenery of pine and oak forests and deep valleys, it was all mesmerizing and pleasant weekend. Here, the man was sharing his amusing adventure in Shimla. We all tend to share such stories with someone at some point. Sharing a story can be a simple conversation between grandfather and grandson on the playground talking about school’s activities for the day. Storytelling is like an activity for children who can create their imaginary world to convey their meaning and can boost interpersonal skills.
Why should I tell stories to my child? What will he learn from them?
Stories are a great way to teach children how to share their feelings and emotions. It can help them to communicate effectively. It is quite flexible for children as they can read them in one sitting. Children can learn from stories and nursery rhymes with phonics and number songs such as Mary had a little lamb or one two buckle my shoe. Stories such as fairy tales, moral stories, or picture stories are snow white, Little Red Riding hood, and Jack and beanstalk.
How stories can develop people skills in children?
Early childhood began with children’s plays, drawings, and learning body language and narratives. They have a very little attention span and stories are an excellent way to teach them observational and language skills. On the other hand, storytelling for students is essential to improve their listening, reading, and grammar abilities. It is an effective tool for children to convey their feelings, ideas, and creativity.
Read: Ways to Develop Observational Skills and How it helps Children
How Storytelling helps children to elevate creativity?
When it comes to developing people skills, creativity is crucial in children’s education. It is a superb tool for youngsters that allows them to create ideas and improve their ability to think profoundly. It helps students boost self-confidence and awareness to express themselves. Creative skills develop curiosity, play, and change in children. Curiosity opens up the imagination to explore the inner and outer worlds; playing involves learning new things and experimenting to gain the ability to change is very helpful for kids. Creative skills include analysis, open-mindedness, problem-solving, communication, and organization. These skills build confidence in students and help them with people skills.
Let’s learn about creative thinking skills.
- Analysis: to analyze creatively and carefully to understand what it means, for ex: reading a text, or a lesson plan.
- Open-mindedness: Thinking creatively with a fresh idea and tackling an issue with an open mind can help a learner think skillfully.
- Problem Solving: These skills help children increase self-confidence and encourage them to seek solutions creatively.
- Communication: To be good at communication, one has to be an honest listener to understand the conversation effortlessly.
- Organization: here, creative ideas should be well-organized for their clear goals.
Along with learning creative skills, some activities help kids develop storytelling ideas.
Creative activities that help children in storytelling:
- Story Dice: This is a regular dice with picture icons such as a football, a happy face and a mike, children can use these icons to create stories in groups or a speaking exercise.
- Story Grid: Here, kids need to draw a grid on the board and then put one word in each box to create a story using words like, theft, robbery and treasure. Using this, they can build their vocabulary and imagination for recalling and classifying words and idioms.
- Story Generators: Here, children, can easily create stories using a story generator a online tool by choosing picture-based options to read or act out the text in groups
- Storybook creation: Story bird is a website for kids that can create engaging and inspiring story books class activities.
How is storytelling beneficial to build language skills for kids?
In our daily conversation, we all use language in various ways. In meetings, we talk firmly, but with a friend, we tend to be empathetic. While writing an email we use clear and direct language. On the other hand, reading a newspaper, a small book, or a poem helps us convey our ideas. Also, listening to a podcast or a lecture can improve our vocabulary. Such conversations are beneficial as well for children’s creativity and intellectual growth.
Storytelling is one of the best ways parents can help children develop language skills. They enjoy listening to stories and nursery rhymes that help them develop motor skills. Storytelling is a fun exercise for children that uses a variety of gestures, visuals, games, and role-playing to improve language retention and acquisition. These language tasks generate new storytelling ideas in kids.
Let’s get to know some storytelling ideas to build language skills in kids:
- Conveying meaning: Through eye-gazing, gesture, listening, observing, and recalling the event of the story.
- Verbal Sounds: demonstrating clear enunciation of words.
- Improving grammar: modeling advanced language, ‘as fast as a horse, as ‘little as an ant’.
- Building narratives requires 1. Logical thinking 2. Familiarity with stories 3. A beginning, middle, and end structure.
- Aiming for advanced language: elevating humor, using tongue twisters, literary forms such as similes (red like roses), and metaphor, (she is an early bird).
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Storytelling is an effective tool for children to build people skills. They can develop public speaking and confidence-building skills. It helps children’s creativity to improve their language and thinking skills to communicate easily. In addition, children can learn a lot from public speaking courses and story apps to improve their creative abilities.
Know more about our Public Speaking Course for Kids
References:
Dominika Herranen, How to enhance children’s creativity through storytelling, Expertise Insight for future 2020, https://www.theseus.fi/handle
Gafour, w.a. ola, Gafour, A.S. Walid, Creative Thinking Skills-A Review Article, May 2020,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349003763_Creative_Thinking_skills_-A_Review_article
Dr. Husain Noushad, Language and language skills, march 2015
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274310952_Language_and_Language_Skills
Izzah Lidiyatul and Mutiarani, The Power of Storytelling in Teaching English to Young Learners, June 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324277772
Mokhtar, Nor Hansi, The effectiveness of Storytelling In enhancing communication skills,
2010, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf
Web sources:
http://www.education.vic.gov.au
https://americanliterature.com/
https://ihworld.com/ih-journal
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