When young children play, they enter a world of their very own, where their vivid imagination takes over, and anything is possible. They make up elaborate storylines, plots, and twists, where laws of nature and physics often don’t exist, and there is always a perfect ending for them, even though it may not make sense to us.
Children use ‘play’ to make sense of the world and apply what they have learnt. Very often, their play sessions include elements of storytelling, and with practice, their storylines progress from simple to complex.
Encourage your child’s imagination with creative storytelling activities at home. In this blog, discover the power of storytelling for nursery-age children and see firsthand why storytelling is important for early development.
Why Is Storytelling Important
Storytelling is a very beneficial activity for young children, especially for language development. Children are taught, and they learn a language in numerous ways by repeating what is said, listening to it spoken to them, learning the alphabet, phonetics, handwriting practice, and so on. While the latter three options seem tedious and frustrating to them, they will happily listen to someone talking to them, telling them a story, or may even enthusiastically participate in a conversation.
How Storytelling Helps Your Child
Story telling for nursery-age or kindergarten children is more than just fun. It offers real learning benefits:
1. Builds language and communication skills
Listening to stories helps children understand new words, how to form sentences, and how to express themselves clearly.
2. Sparks creativity
When children imagine characters or create their own stories, it boosts their creative thinking.
3. Encourages self-expression
Kids can share their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a safe and fun way.
4. Boosts confidence
Telling stories in front of others or acting them out helps children feel more confident in themselves.
5. Improves focus and attention
Storytelling keeps children engaged. Activities like describing their drawings or recording their favourite stories help them stay focused longer.
Storytelling Activities For Kids
Storytelling activities remove the stress, frustration, pressure and repetitive nature of academic work while allowing them to explore and learn the language in a fun, exciting and playful manner. These activities are essential in the early years because:
- Aids in language and communication skills
- Enhances creativity
- Encourages self-expression
- Boosts confidence
- Improves concentration
Storytelling activities like ‘describe your drawing’ or ‘enacting a familiar story’ keep the children engaged and focused for longer periods as they are fully involved in the process. They also give them a chance to develop their speaking skills.
Storytelling Activities For Kids
Here are some tried and tested ways to introduce and practise storytelling –
1. Picture or photo stories
This storytelling activity for preschoolers requires you to make up a story based on a photo or picture in front of you. You’ll need a few photos or pictures from old magazines or newspapers for this activity. You can even source some interesting pictures online and print them out. You’ll also need a glue stick, a sheet of paper (plain or lined), a journal, a pencil, and an eraser.
First, spread a few pictures before your child and ask them to choose one. Let them stick the picture on the sheet of paper, or they can stick it on the left side of the journal. This helps get them interested and involved in the process.
Then, ask your child to talk about the picture, what they see, what they think is happening, why it is happening and so on; let your child speak their mind and prompt them only when you feel they are getting stuck; help them with the right words and phrases and encourage them to speak in complete sentences instead of just words.
You can then ask them to repeat what you spoke about and write it down for them. If the story is too long, you can paraphrase it, keeping the gist of the story.
2. Describe or tell a story about your drawing or art work
This storytelling activity is similar to the previous one and has the same advantages. The only difference is that your child draws one for themselves instead of using photos and ready pictures. All they need is a sheet of paper, a drawing book, or a journal. They can use any colour they prefer, such as pencils, pens, paints, crayons, etc.
Children love this activity as they talk about what they have drawn. Since it is their creation, they identify with it and will have lots to tell you. However, it might just begin with your child naming what they have drawn and may require a lot of prompting from you. But once they get the hang of this activity, they will come up with surprisingly elaborate stories, much to your surprise.
3. Retell a familiar story from a storybook
Children love listening to stories; the more they listen, the more familiar they get. You will even see their little faces light up when you get to the exciting parts of the story. They will correct you if you miss a part of the story. When this happens, you know that your child knows the story well. Use this opportunity to get them to tell you the story. This activity builds self-confidence and develops their English speaking skills and memory.
4. Enact a familiar story
For children who are not fond of writing, drawing or are not ready to narrate their own story, this activity will prove handy without sacrificing the benefits of storytelling. The activity is a lot of fun as children can either dress up in elaborate costumes or simply put together costumes based on materials available at home.
It is beneficial if you have more than one child at home, you could enact the story as a family, or have a playdate with a few of your children’s friends, giving each one a character to play from a familiar story. Take a few minutes to read the story with them, and then sit back and enjoy the show. It might take a few turns for them to get the hang of enacting the story without interruptions. This activity promotes creativity, improves memory, builds self-esteem and confidence, and develops listening, cognitive and social skills.
5. Make up your own story from a collection of objects
This storytelling activity is for slightly older children who are already used to making up their own stories. Use a basket, box, or suitable container and fill it with assorted toys like figurines, animals, plastic fruit and vegetables or any other toy food items, cars/ vehicles. Maybe even throw in a few random household items like a toothbrush, loofah, bowl, dusting brush, or even a large spoon; the more variety of toys, the better. Let your child help you collect the items, then give them time to review them and select a few. Involving your child in the process will get them thinking as well.
List Of Things You Might Need For Creative Storytelling Activities:
1. Picture books and storybooks
An expansive home library with various engaging picture books and chapter books provides endless inspiration and source material for kids to recreate and retell stories. Rotate books weekly to maintain interest. Choose titles with rich illustrations, emotive photos, or intriguing plotlines to capture children’s imagination and express their creative juices. Books featuring fantasy lands, talking animals, unlikely friendships, magic, humour, and adventure are always a hit.
2. Dress-up clothes/costume box
Pieces like capes, boas, plastic heels, costume, jewellery, and hats allow children to take on and commit to a character role. Rotate dress-ups seasonally and based on kids’ latest story inspiration. Placing costumes alongside correlating props like magic wands, pirate swords, and spy gadgets enhances pretend play possibilities. Add puppets to the mix, and you have an ideal storytelling station.
3. Puppets
Puppets inspire storytelling by giving kids a masked character to channel. Whether store-bought puppets or homemade varieties using socks, paper bags, felt, foam sheets, or craft supplies – puppets captivate children’s imaginations, allowing them to find unique voices and personalities. Let kids design their own special puppets, too. Put on mini home puppet shows reenacting favourite story moments.
4. Arts and crafts supplies
Maintain ample stock of crayons, gel pens, markers, glitter glue sticks, and keep replenishing. Craft materials like feathers, pom poms, googly eyes, sequins, coloured tissue paper, stickers, kid-friendly scissors, hole punchers, and popsicle sticks facilitate making storytelling props. Use plasticine, Play-Doh, and Wiki Stix to sculpt story objects. Have blank colouring sheets with generic scenes available.
5. Building toys
Building blocks, magnetic tiles, interlocking brick sets, and straw/connector sets foster the creation of story scenes and sequences. They build spatial reasoning and math skills, too. Building kits with plastic animals, trees, bridges, and road signs enables inventing small world story settings. Figurines bring it full circle.
6. Blank books/bookmaking supplies
Use bound blank books, staplers, hole punches, yarn, and tracing paper to assemble DIY books. Kids can illustrate and write/dictate their own stories as keepsake journals promoting literacy foundations. Creative bookmaking and story authoring develop narrative skills, too.
7. Figurines & small world toys
Realistic animal replicas and fairy dolls paired up with related play sets provide the seeds for hatching all kinds of tales. Toy cars, trains, doll houses, and farm sets encourage interweaving play-driven plot lines about relationships, adventures, and more. Rotate small worlds monthly.
8. Music and instruments
Sing story songs and incorporate rhythmic instruments like maracas, jingle bells, xylophones, rainsticks, and small drums to punctuate story moments. Vary tempo and volume to build excitement. Produce your own sound effects.
9. Digital media
Use free storytelling apps and animation software (age-appropriate) to ignite fresh sci-fi and digital stories. Add voiceovers, sound effects, and customised scenes. Video kids’ performances to help them self-evaluate.
10. Miscellaneous
Whiteboards, charts, and easel pads provide blank canvases to map out story drafts visually. Use round tub mats as “magic storytelling carpets.” Place decorated buckets or hats nearby to collect storytelling ticket fees and tips.
11. Storytelling props box
Have a special box or basket filled with random, fun storytelling props like sunglasses, hats, canes, gadgets, badges, jewellery, flowers, and scarves. Kids can pick a few items as story inspirations. Surprise them with new props weekly.
12. Storytelling costumes box
Alongside dress-up clothes, curate a box with just costumes like capes, masks, wigs, princess dresses, firefighter jackets, and hard hats that spark story ideas. Let kids mix and match costumes and props.
13. Nature items
Leaves, acorns, pinecones, seashells, pebbles, and twigs can become story ingredients too! Bring the outdoor natural world into stories and enhance science concepts.
14. Toy vehicles
Toy cars, trucks, emergency vehicles, trains, boats, and ten-wheeler trucks provide transportation story hooks! Playsets extend ideas, e.g., airport sets.
15. Dollhouse
A miniature dollhouse with furniture and family figurines fuels social stories about relationships, careers, and daily life. Tweens may enjoy stacking small boxes as homemade dollhouses.
16. Model magic/clay
Kids sculpt their own unique story characters and props from clay and model magic to flesh out narrative details and backstories. Premade Play-Doh moulds speed up the process.
17. Flashlights/lanterns
In a darkened room, flashlights cast cool effects and build suspense for sharing scary stories! Lanterns also contribute to mood lighting.
When doing the storytelling activities with kids for the first time, choosing a few items and making up a story may be better. Then, put the items back in the container and let your child do the same with their selection of toys. You can do the activity together, forming a story chain where your child starts the story, and you make up the next line based on what they have said, and then your child continues with the story based on what you have said and so on till all the items are used up. While doing the activity, demonstrate how you have linked the items to create a story and add a twist to the storyline.
Conclusion
In the end, storytelling activities for preschoolers make great memories; as much as possible, write down the stories created, take pictures of the enactments and put them together in a journal or album to look at some other time. The efforts you put in now for the storytelling activities will bear fruit as your child grows older and can speak confidently and clearly. Check out our blog, Benefits Of Storytelling In Child Development, to learn the benefits of storytelling for nursery and preschool kids. Don’t forget to check out EuroKids Blogs for more insights on your kid’s development and learning.
At EuroKids, the teachers are well aware that children love stories and, therefore, use storytelling in various ways to make their lessons interesting. Through stories, various concepts can be explained, as well as values taught to children in a fun manner. Children listen with full attention and also participate wholeheartedly in storytelling activities. Click here to find a centre near you and see how engaged the children are in the classroom.
