Story Time: Storytelling And Why You Need Your Kids To Hear More
It is amazing how kids are daydreaming half of their waking day, yet can fully immerse themselves in a story with the concentration span of an elephant. For many cultures, the art of storytelling is a respected art form that acts as the transfer of values and traditions by the elders of a family to its younger generations. Though the traditional system of imparting history via storytelling has considerably declined with modernity.
There is very little doubt in the ability, stories told via storytelling have in the cognitive development of infants and young children. Apart from improving cognitive function, it aids with memory and language development. Storytelling improves your child’s imagination, with stories from different cultures exposing them of a world unknown, this opens up their mind to a bigger world.
What stories can you say?
• Think of experiences in your childhood or stories you have heard from your parents and grandparents. In olden days, telling stories to kids by elders was considered a part of their duty.
• Folk Stories from other cultures will open your child to a larger world and this would lead it to be more welcoming and deeper understanding of other cultures.
• Books; there are several books out there one can read to their wards, ranging from books about the sun and the moon to books about fantasy lands.
• Ask your child what she or he is interested in and there probably will exist something you can read your child about it.
Alternative means to storytelling
• Storytelling with the aid of videos is a unique way to tell stories, with the addition of sounds and bright colors making the story more interesting.
• A fun exercise you can try in the next sessions is to narrate the story and leave it a point upon which the child will narrate. This is a great exercise in improving memory power.
• Another great way is telling stories via pictures, whereby you ask a child to build a story around a picture, this makes a fun storytelling for kids.