Importance of Storytelling in a Child's Development

Everybody loves a story and more so children. During a child's early years learning is made fun through story telling. On grandmas lap, when mommy is working in the kitchen, or when daddy puts the little ones to bed. There are many benefits in the simple act of story telling.

Friendship with books

With the expansion of digital age, fun time with books is a rarity. Small infants can be given, bubble or board books hence not causing them harm.

Builds vocabulary and language skills

Stories help add to the vocabulary list but more importantly develop language skills. Illustrative and interactive books increase speech and language and also help in developing attention concentration and sitting skills.

Helps understand relative concepts

Stories are filled with a variety of characters; big and small, skinny and fat, young and old, quiet and loud, animals of different shapes, sizes, and colors, and much more. All of these form several descriptions, expressed through words. This helps young minds gradually build a relation between these differential concepts.

Stimulates imagination

An added benefit is the development of creativity. The sounds, words and concepts learned from the books help them in creating fantasies of wide and far away places, fairiesand princes, witches and beasts. It helps them relate to concepts of real and imaginary worlds.

Develops listening skills

In the current world bombarded with noise and chatter, story telling helps instill good listening skills in a child. They may sit and attend carefully to the “what’s next” in a story.

Provokes curiosity

What, where, when, how questions to expand their knowledge of the world and all things surrounding them. Story telling evokes a curiosity in children thereby making them question all things around them.

Stories beyond morals

Stories and fables gives an insight in the do’s or don'tsin a culture, things of past and in general morals to be followed.

Learn to develop and narrate a story

Start with short stories and encourage them it make it longer and before long the act of story telling becomes an unconscious effort. Older children learning stories from their parents or grandparents become excellent story tellers for their younger siblings.