Kids love to hear stories. Listening to the short stories narrated by their parents is one of their favourite pastime activities. You might have seen them living their imaginary life by getting hooked on the plot presented to them. While listening to stories, they visualise every scene and picture themselves to be a part of them. Developing a habit of listening to stories on a daily basis will help children to enhance their visualisation and creativity skills. Apart from this, it plays a critical role in developing language and communication skills. Being one of the oldest and most effective methods, many parents, as well as teachers, rely on stories for presenting an idea or introducing a concept to children. Storytelling to kids is considered essential as it helps to develop multiple literacy skills in them.
As we all know, storytelling is one of the ancient forms of art where a storyteller employs interactive usages and tonal variations to make the plot live for listeners. A story can be narrated in numerous ways based on how innovative the narrator is. One of the key areas where a storyteller needs to concentrate on is the presentation of the multiple elements like the plot, characters, setting, point of view, and conflict that are an intrinsic part of any story. The ways in which each of these elements is presented plays a significant role in engaging the readers. Let’s help our little ones to learn all these techniques in storytelling by introducing stories from an early age. Do you know the fact that children can effortlessly grasp new words that they hear and use throughout the first years of their lives? Storytelling can help them evolve in numerous ways. Conducting story writing and storytelling competitions and related activities, and having them participate in them can help in making kids’ education more entertaining.
Importance of Storytelling in Child Development
Storytelling is one of the most effective ways to nurture a child’s personality. Listening to stories helps them in getting acquainted with new words in the English vocabulary and understand the necessity of keeping good virtues in life; it offers multiple advantages to children. People all across the world consider stories as the simplest technique to enhance creative abilities in children. Some of the significant benefits of storytelling are listed below.
- Stories help to develop moral values in kids: As we know, kids are curious to listen to and learn new things. Stories have the potential to influence and leave a significant impact on them. You might have seen smiles blooming on their faces whenever they happen to hear a story that highlights a good moral. Along with entertainment, listening to and reading stories helps children to understand the value of emotions and other essential human qualities.
- Reading and listening to stories helps to enhance general knowledge in children: They offer a chance for children to familiarise themselves with various facts and information from different parts of the world.
- Stories offer an opportunity for children to understand their culture and that of others: It helps them understand the significance of respecting the cultures of each other. Stories can be considered as an entryway to travel through and experience new traditions, environments, practices, customs, etc.
- Stories nurture imagination: While listening to a story, kids place themselves inside it and try to visualise every scene. Such an exercise on a regular basis will help them build their imagination and to think out of the box.
- Stories enhance listening skills in children: As we know, children get distracted quite easily. As they are excited about every new thing that they discover, they lose their attention very easily. Since listening skills and level of focus are imperative life skills, it is very important to build them. By listening to stories on a daily basis, kids can gradually increase their attention span.
- They help in sharpening emotional intelligence: Kids will learn how to control emotions and start to be more thoughtful towards others. They will learn to recognise the space of other people in their lives and will crack the true meaning of words like empathy, sympathy, compassion, etc.
- Storytelling also offers a chance for parents to spend quality time with their children. Engaging in such exercises will help to strengthen the bond shared between parents and children.
Do you think the above listed are the only benefits of listening to and reading stories? No, not at all. Stories offer us the opportunity to experience a plethora of benefits.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” These are the words said by the famous American poet Maya Angelou. Let’s create interest in children to explore more in the world of literature by introducing stories of different genres from an early age. Let’s inculcate the habit of listening to and reading stories in them, and try to motivate them to create their own stories and present them in front of others. A collection of short stories for kids that are engaging and with great morals can be found by visiting BYJU’S website.