What Is Storytelling?
Who does not love listening to bedtime stories or during your leisure time? Well, not only kids, even adults are fond of listening to stories. It is the art of vividly describing facts, narratives, experiences and emotions interactively to the audience. While some stories are reality-based, some are illustrative and provide a better explanation of the inner message.
It has been witnessed that storytelling not only helps kids get back to sleep with ease, it also boosts their minds with factual and fictional information. It helps them get a grip on the language and understand various emotions of human nature. Read through the article to have a better understanding of the benefits of storytelling as well as the importance of storytelling in early childhood education.
Storytelling for Kids
Nowadays, most kids have working parents who are so busy that they hardly get any time to spend with them. Parents choose easy way-outs to make their children eat, sleep or do stuff faster and so, they take the help of the growing technology to keep their little ones engaged. This might not turn out to be a very healthy practice in the long run.
Did you know that one of the ancient forms of teaching was storytelling? Well, storytelling for kids is a special art that lets you describe a sequence of events, be it true or imaginary, in a manner that stimulates your child’s emotions and helps him or her think more. While listening to stories a child’s mind is filled up with joy and happiness. It also increases his or her ability to imagine things in a broader sense.
Reading out stories to kids
Importance of Storytelling
Now that you are well aware of the act of storytelling, let’s take a look at the importance of storytelling in your child’s life. The importance of storytelling in early days was immense and very effective, as the world was not under the spell of technologies. So, to keep your kids engaged and get more educated you may read out a story from any interesting storybook, or a comic book. You may even frame something from your mind or talk about your own experiences. Whichever way it is, this beautiful art will help in boosting your little one’s personality and kindle their imagination.
Benefits of Storytelling
These days, parents tend to depend on the comfort presented by various modes of technology to keep their children engaged, make them eat faster and get back to sleep. This might seem to happen smoothly without facing any kind of fuss. Well, let us remind you that although your child might go to sleep watching an episode of a cartoon or some funny videos, it has no comparison to the delightfulness of storytelling for kids. Here are some of the advantages of storytelling lined up for you.
Knowing Their Roots and Understanding Their Culture:
Telling historical stories will help your child gain more knowledge about the diverse world. While reading out the stories, you may also share some pictures of the various cultural events from the past, like celebrations, exciting activities, and even some incidents. This will enrich them with the knowledge of different cultures from different regions around the globe. Also, make sure to tell them stories about your past and ancestors to make them aware of their roots and origin.
Upgrading Their Listening and Thinking Skills:
Children are mostly talkative. They have this tendency to talk more and more from the very moment they learn to speak and listen less to what others say. If the stories that you are trying to read out to them are not that interesting, they will start paying less attention and thus, will lack thinking. To make the storytelling sessions interesting, choose the ones that are fun filled and embellished with clear inner meanings. This would encourage your kid to listen attentively and hence improve his or her thought process.
Sharpening Their Memories:
We all know by now that storytelling helped in educating children in the earlier days. One importance of storytelling in teaching is that it could really help your child excel in his or her academics in the long run. You can use this act to sharpen your kids’ memory and boost their concentration skills. You may narrate a story and after one or two days ask questions from it and check if they are able to answer you. You may even ask them about the moral of the story after you’ve finished reading. These techniques will help enhance their concentration power and sharpen their memories.
Enhancing your kid’s memory skills
Improving Their Language Skills and Verbal Proficiency:
Kids tend to learn and grasp things quickly and easily when they listen or hear something. When you read a good story to your little ones every day, they not only get to learn the language, but also the pronunciations of new and unique words. This helps them in communicating with people around them with much comfort.
Uplifting Their Virtues and Ethics:
Storytelling can have a huge impact on a person’s life, starting from children to adults. Often in their real life, they tend to imitate the various features of the characters in the stories. So, you need to carefully choose the type of story before reading it to your kids. You should read stories with significant endings, ethical messages and fine morals. Stories that are enthralling help build up certain qualities in your kids, like gratitude, wisdom, truthfulness, loyalty, honesty, courage, etc.
Developing Emotions and Empathy:
When you read stories with deep inner meaning and good messages to your children, they learn to think deeply. They start growing emotions and show empathy toward those in need. This thoughtful behaviour will help your child become a better individual in future.
Conclusion
To conclude it can be said that embrace your kids’ minds and hearts with good meaningful stories and help in nurturing the various attributes of their lives in a positive manner. This act could help in developing different skills and enhance childhood education. One of the advantages of storytelling is that you get to spend good quality time with your child, which most kids are deprived of nowadays due to busy schedules and modern technology.
