8 Benefits of Storytelling For Children

November 02, 2021

Remember those moments when your little one sits enthralled, listening to you with wide eyes and mouth open? Then suddenly burst out into peals of laughter or broke into a smile as you read their favourite stories out to them? The tone of your voice, gestures, and facial expressions as you read stories for children tend to take your child on terrific journeys. Storytelling for children can be a magical experience and instills a sense of wonder in them. Listening to stories can trigger a child’s imagination and transport them to places beyond their environment in their minds.

Considered the oldest form of teaching and an important part of human history, the art of storytelling for children brings language learning alive. Reading aloud short stories for children enables language development and promotes early literacy skills. The benefits of reading to children are multifold. Engaging your child in immersive experiences through story reading impacts the child way beyond just literacy skills. Whether it is talking to your child about your childhood, for instance, or story reading for kids, storytelling for children plays an important role in preschool learning.

In addition to helping them make sense of the immediate world around them, short stories for children can also develop an understanding, respect, and appreciation in children for other cultures, beliefs, and distant lands. In short, storytelling for children has many benefits in development in early childhood.

Benefits of Storytelling For Kindergarteners: the benefits of storytime in early childhood are numerous.

1. Story Reading For Kids Fosters Imagination: as the story unfolds, a child’s imagination can run wild. In their heads, the story can take whatever shape they want it to take. While listening to you, they imagine the different characters and instances from the story. It enhances their creativity and opens them up to new possibilities. As they listen, they associate stories with images. It further develops their capacity to visualize and imagine.

2. Enhances Listening Skills: most often, your child may find it difficult to concentrate for extended periods of time. This is normal. However, storytelling for children can help capture their attention and also improve their listening skills.

3. Improves Your Child’s Communication Skills: storytelling encourages your child to express themselves. It increases their ability and willingness to express their thoughts, ideas, and feelings. It also enables children to ask the right questions and strike a good conversation, thus making them more confident.

4. Enhances Focus and Social Skills: Storytelling encourages your child to actively listen and pay attention to what you have to say. Patience and focus, which they learn through the process, enable them to encounter aspects they haven’t before.

5. Storytelling For Children Develops Reading Skills: spending time regularly reading stories for children in English can help them get acquainted with the language. Short stories for kids with pictures create magic! Every image can tell short stories for children to read. In addition to building their vocabulary, it also encourages the child to interact with books and fosters enthusiastic readers for the future.

6. Aids in Sharpening Your Child’s Memory: after reading out stories for children, ensure that you repeat or review them in different ways with your child. Combined with your child sharing their understanding of the story, it helps increase memory and improves concentration.

7. Makes Learning Easier: Storytelling prepares and sets your child up for all future academic learning. An activity done frequently helps your child understand and enjoy what is read to them. It fuels curiosity which can further ensure that they don’t catch on to the habit of rote memorization.

8. Reading For Kids Can Broaden Horizons: it creates a sense of belonging by familiarising them with their immediate cultures and surroundings. Storytelling can also open a whole new and different world for your child. Exposing them to different cultures and countries through your stories will develop their empathy as they broaden their understanding of the world.

While a regular routine of storytelling for children will instill a love for books in them, it also gives you time to bond with your child in a special way.

Storytelling can be as simple as you reading bedtime stories for kids in English or sharing a story from your own life. This medium brings feeling and meaning into ideas that may not otherwise be as interesting at times. So add some drama, set the scene, have props and effects to draw your little ones into the story.

Here are some tips for you on how to capture your child’s attention while storytelling.

You do not have to tell complicated stories. Keep it simple;
Maintaining eye contact will help you connect with your child and keep their attention longer;
Move! Use your hands, feet, legs, and head to perform certain parts of the story. This will keep your child engaged and focussed;
Use your voice to bring characters and situations to life;
Make the characters and situations of your story relatable;
Use of props only makes the experience a whole more fun;
Create music or fun sound effects;
Provide rich details of the story’s environment. Set the scene to get your child’s imagination going!
Encourage them to ask questions and share their thoughts. Have them talk about how they feel;
Use dramatic pauses at crucial moments to give your child the chance to think critically and to also build excitement;
Use vivid language. This helps to build your child’s vocabulary and understand its usage;
Activate as many senses as possible while storytelling;
Repetition in different forms helps strengthen your child’s understanding.

A child’s fascination with stories is no different now, in an age where the use of digital mediums among children is only increasing by the day. E-learning apps like Kutuki provide creative content for kids. Created solely for Indian preschoolers of ages 2-6 years, the Kutuki kids learning app offers interactive online stories for kids, engaging rhymes, and games with attractive animations and illustrations to meet the storytelling and learning needs of preschoolers. To know more about the features of the app, read our blog titled, “The Kutuki Kids Learning App- Here’s What You Must Know”.