Art of Story Telling

A good and well-presented story is successful in reaching its objective and remembered long after over others. Reaching its listeners, holding the interest and crossing all age barriers is the impact of an effective storytelling.

Knowing and applying the art of storytelling will not only strengthen your stories but also develop the desired interest in the audience.

If you monotonously recite a story, the audience will lose interest and the gist of your story will be lost and flooded by the boredom of the crowd.

Students develop their own storytelling talents, apply the techniques of storytelling, create storytelling guides, and perform a story for an audience.

This helps them develop good linguistic and communication skills.

Studies have proved that infancy is the period when children absorb most of the words that they later use in their lives.

So, telling stories even to infants should be an important part of a parent’s schedule. When they grow up, storytelling encourages and enhances the listening skills of children.

Usually, children like to talk more rather than listen and this behavior is evident especially in classrooms — they are not usually good listeners.

But when a habit of listening to stories is inculcated in them, they learn to become better listeners. It provides them the necessary training to listen and understand more, instead of talking.

Storytelling has many values. Some of them are:

o It gives children an opportunity to become acquainted with the best of children’s literature.

o Stories talk about varied lives and prevailing cultures. This creates a curiosity in children to know more about those times and such people’.

o It increases a child’s knowledge and enriches his vocabulary.

o It helps build an ethical value system.

o It develops a child’s listening skills.

o When the child tells a story, she learns to organize and express herself clearly. She becomes confident in facing an audience.

Suitable stories for different age groups:

Ages 2 to 5: For this age group, the stories must be short and to the point.

Stories should talk about familiar things that the child can relate to, like animals, children, home, machines, people, toys, rhymes, humorous and nonsense stories and poems, jingles.

Typical stories would include: ‘The Three Little Pigs’, ‘The Three Bears’, ‘The Adventures of Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Thumbelina’ and more.

Ages 6 to 10: Animal tales, stories of children living in other lands, and the ancient and modern fairy tales appeal to this group.

Examples of such stories: ‘The Elves and the Shoemaker’, ‘Rumpelstiltskin’, ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’, ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ and ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, tales from Panchatantra and our epics.

Storytelling activities for pre-schoolers:

1. Storytelling Prompts Jar

Grab an empty jar from your kitchen and some torn up pieces of paper. On each small piece of paper write a random word or phrase.

This could be anything, such as cat, princess or a phrase (list of story prompts for kids). Put all the torn-up pieces of paper inside the jar.

Then take turns to take out a piece of paper. Whatever the word is on that paper, that person must tell a story using that word or phrase.

If your child gets stuck, you can use prompts, such as:

” What does your character see or hear?”

“Who else is there?”

“What does the place look like?”

2. DIY Story Cubes

Just like storytelling prompts jar, the DIY stone cubes can be used to provide some inspiration on how to start your story.

Follow the instructions over at the “grey luster girl” website to create your own story cubes. Once done, you can toss the cubes around and see what object they land on.

Whatever you land on, that’s the object you can include in your storytelling! You can also use multiple story cubes to structure your story.

For example, your story cubes can be used decide on the hero in your story, the setting, the villain and any other extra props to include.