Once upon a time, parents everywhere mastered the art of making storytelling fun for their kids.
Now wouldn’t this just be the perfect ending to any parenting story?
We cannot overstate the value of storytelling, especially for younger children. While you may see storytelling as entertaining, there are more benefits to storytelling for children. Children learn new words during the storytelling process, they develop certain personality traits when listening to stories, and stories provide them with the looking glass through which they can see the world.
Storytelling for children has numerous advantages. However, all children love storytelling, irrespective of whether they are listening to a tale being told or whether they are telling the story themselves. For this reason alone, we look at certain tips and tricks that you can use to make the process of storytelling more fruitful and fun.
If you are in search of a recipe to use to cook up the best story, we cannot provide you with one. However, we can give you the best ingredient to turn any story from mediocre to amazing. All you need is love. If you love the story that you sharing, the story will naturally be a gripping one. The best stories are the ones where the storyteller’s enthusiasm shines right through the story and we certainly know that your enthusiasm will shine through when you tell your kids stories that you love.
The same rule applies when you encourage your little one to tell you a story. Choose a topic that your child loves and ask your child to tell you a made-up story based on that topic. Children who love dinosaurs will be thrilled to share an imaginary tale about a dinosaur. Again, when children talk about a subject that they love, their passion is apparent too.
Hence the best tool when working on telling a story or when encouraging your kid to tell you a story is a pinch of love.
When Lewis Carroll coined the phrase, “going down the rabbit hole”, it referred to the surreal and nonsensical world of Wonderland where Alice found herself. When you are working on crafting the perfect story for your child, you must have an element of strange or surreal in your story too. However, you must try to create a believable setting and relatable characters. If your child can relate to the characters that you create, he or she will enjoy the story even more.
In the same way, you should encourage your child to go down the rabbit hole too and use his or her vivid imagination to his or her advantage. Your child can tell a story with animal characters instead of humans and it will be perfectly great.
It is a great technique to experiment with the element of surrealism in every story and it keeps the story interesting too.
While experimentation during the storytelling process is always good, you don’t want to be Goldilocks experimenting with so many options before you find the right trick to hit the nail on the head when it comes to storytelling techniques. The right way to do storytelling is to make the entire process of storytelling more educational and to follow the correct structure of a story. Your story must have a beginning, a middle with plot twists and conflict, and an ending. If you want to keep your child’s interest, you need to make sure not to make the ending an anti-climax.
The trick is to get your child to follow the correct storytelling structure when telling a story too. If you find that your child is not ending a story properly, you need to steer your child in the right direction so that the story has a better-rounded ending.
The story that is just right has an interesting beginning, a gripping plot, and an ending that doesn’t disappoint.
We don't expect you to be like Cinderella's wicked step-sister squeezing her foot into a shoe that doesn’t fit, but we do suggest that you use a decent amount of gestures and expressions if they fit the story well. Children do react well to non-verbal cues so you can make the entire process of storytelling better if you use facial expressions and gestures when acting out parts of the story.
It is a fun idea to get your children to act out parts of their stories too. While they are telling their stories, ask them to use facial expressions to show how the lion looked when he roared or how scared the princess was when she screamed.
You have to keep in mind that young children are unable to visualize abstract ideas. So it is hard for them to envision a story without seeing pictures of the story or without seeing the objects mentioned in the story. A great suggestion is to use props, objects, and books to enhance your storytelling process.
You can also help your child to tell stories more easily by getting your child to look at a picture in a book and be inspired. You can also get a prop and encourage your child to tell a story using this prop.
We don’t expect you to invite the Cat in the Hat over, but we do suggest that you have a few props stuffed in a hat. To make storytelling with props all the more exciting, we suggest you get a hat full of props.
Pull out a prop and use the prop to determine the story that you will tell your child. Tell your story first and then allow your child to share his or her story using the same prop.
When storytelling you can choose to make it an entirely passive process where you tell a story and have your child merely listen to the story. However, it is best if you actively involve your child in the storytelling process. Ask your child questions as you are telling the story so that you get your child to be involved in the story.
When your child is telling the story, be fully immersed in the story that he or she is telling you. Ask questions as your child is telling a story to make sure that you are guiding your child to tell the story better and to describe everything as they are telling the story. By making the storytelling process active, you are teaching your child how to tell a story in a more engaging and meaningful way.
Ask your child, “If you were the princess, would you kiss the frog?”
While you might not have as long hair as Rapunzel, storytelling gives you the chance to let your hair down and enjoy teaching your child without it feeling like a chore. So let your hair down and don’t overthink the process. Enjoy storytelling and listening to the interesting stories that your child may be sharing with you.
The more often you practice storytelling, the better you will become at storytelling. Your child will also become more familiar with the expectations when storytelling if you get your child to tell stories more often.
Do you remember Jack who climbed the beanstalk many times? Well, storytelling is all about climbing the beanstalk over again. You may have to repeat certain words, phrases, or parts of your story to your child so that he or she can follow along.
With very young children, you will notice that their storytelling techniques may be all over the place at first. It is always a good idea to repeat certain suggestions until your child takes heed of these suggestions.
Eventually, both you and your child will climb the beanstalk to success when storytelling.
While the time slightly before bedtime is the ideal time to take turns telling stories, you can work on storytelling at any time that you like.
Always see the storytelling process as a way to teach your child important life lessons and some core values too. Don’t think of your moral first and then tell the story, but allow your story to build up towards a lesson. Children can easily pick up on a story being told to teach them a lesson. They would much rather have a story that is entertaining with a lesson intertwined somewhere in the story.
As a parent, you are not expected to tell stories that will keep your child at the edge of the bed. However, with some practice, a hint of love, and the help of your curious child, we are pretty sure that you will create captivating stories.
Besides, if your child is better at storytelling than you are, you can pat yourself on the back for a job well done!