Once upon a time, we all grew up listening to stories from our parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
Sometimes powerful, sometimes meaningless, sometimes moral-based and sometimes just hilarious!
Remember how much you enjoyed this story time?
Today, as parents, how much time do you spend with your child, telling them stories?
Vidya Ragu, a psychologist, learning & development expert, tells us about the crucial role that stories play in the lives of our children – and how you can become a great storyteller!
Children love stories.At any point, at any time, stories simply have the power to flip any situation for the better.
Is your child not eating? Tell them a story and they will!
Is your child bored sitting at home while it’s pouring outside? Tell them a story and they’ll be entertained!
Picture-based storytelling:
Show your child random pictures of any kind and ask them to build stories around each one.
They can form a continuous story based on a bunch of pictures, too. Another way to do this kind of storytelling is by asking your kid to draw out a sequence of events and form a story.
This one would work best with a group of your child’s friends.
Storytelling through videos:
Putting on a story with narration, characters, and a moral in video format for your child to watch is a lot better than them watching mostly meaningless television shows.
While this is true, as far as ‘story time’ goes it’s better to actually sit with your child and watch the story with them, while talking to them about it along with the story.
This ensures the quality time you’re going to be spending with them.
Object-based storytelling:
Ask your kid or a group of your kid’s friends to go outside and collect any objects they think would make for a good story.
They then come back with their bags of objects and sit around in a circle.
Each object that a child puts forward, they have to form a part of the story’s scene with it.
Each child takes turns to put forth an object and continue the story.
Passers-by storytelling:
This is one of my personal favorites because I, as an adult, do this all the time.
When you’re in a vehicle with your child, point out random people doing different tasks and along with your child you can either discuss how you think they’re feeling, what their interests might be, what they must do for a living, etc; or you can consider them a character in a story and build a short story around them.
It’s a great way to keep kids occupied during a long car ride!
String-along storytelling:
Be seated in a group with your child. It can involve their friends or your family. Or, if you don’t have a group, you can just play this game between your child and you.
Start off a story and only say about, one sentence. For example, “Once upon a time there lived a boy.”
Then ask your kid to continue the story with one sentence and you’ll alternate turns this way. In a group, of course, everyone participates.
Tale Twist:
For this game, ask your child to combine any two of their favourite stories to form a meaningful new story.
You can also ask them to take a classic story and add their own modern twist to it. Ask them how they would rewrite it.
Conclusion:
You’ll begin realizing that putting in this much energy into telling a story will excite you and make you enjoy it.
You’ll begin to feel more productive and just overall satisfied with the way you’re speaking. Enjoy all the storytelling fun!