Telling Stories

In one of my classes I had a guest speaker, a librarian, and she gave me some very helpful advice and information... Tell stories!

So in my last post I talked about how to get your 3 year old to love reading and story telling goes right along with that.

First of all, you should tell your 3 to 4 year old stories... nursery tales actually.. like Billy Goats Gruff and The Gingerbread Man. Read them, or just your child's favorite, over and over again. Eventually you will remember the story and once you remember it, you don't need to use the book anymore. That is the great thing about telling stories. You don't have to memorize them word for word and you can improvise or change the story if you want to.  Tell stories all of the time. Even when you are getting tired of it, your 3 to 4 year old is just getting the hang of it.

Then he/ she will start telling the story... with or without the book. Either way your child will get used to telling stories and that's what you want. Also, once your child is used to telling stories, you can make up stories and draw them with him/ her!

Why do you want your child to tell stories? Well, there are many reasons why story telling is beneficial for young children...

1. Vocabulary- your child is learning new words when telling stories.. even if you use complicated terms in the story, they will repeat it and eventually understand it based on the context of the story.
2. Play- stories give a foundation for play, imagination, and creativity. So the guest speaker I mentioned said something that amazed me. I didn't realize this was a thing but... some kids don't know how to play!!! What? Yeah! All they have done in their short 3 to 4 years is use technology and push buttons. They have never actually just played with a puppet or pretended to be a lion. So when you tell stories and they retell them, it gives them a foundation for play. They can use these stories as a place to start when they play. They can turn the stuffed dog they have never played with into a billy goat or use their blanket as a hood to be little red riding hood.
3. Finally, Confidence- the more your child retells the nursery tales you have read together, the more confidence they will have in telling stories... not just the nursery tales but stories about every part of their life. When you get off of work and pick up your child from daycare, the first thing you want to know is what did he/ she do all day, right? So as your child becomes more confident with story telling, their response to what they did all will become more detailed because he/ she is confident in their ability to convey a message. WOW! Who knew it was so easy?

On top of telling stories, it's also fun for you and your child to add in some props. For example, if you and your child like to tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and the story talks about the food inside her picnic basket... you can have a picnic basket with food inside it that is familiar to your families culture. There are so many props you can use with any story.

So seriously, tell your child stories!

A big shout out and thanks to the awesome librarian that inspired this post, C. Jones.

Visit the Monroe County Public Library for some great story telling books!