Sometimes before the bed we are reading fairy tales. Sometimes comics, other times listening to the audio fairy tales. But lately we are telling our own stories, fairy tales.
Its interesting to listen to the children imagination in work, stories that sometimes provide of some useful insights. For example, on of the kids was telling story about Christmas and what presents each was getting, so that was helpfull information about what kind of toys, games are actual.
When kids are telling, retelling stories they are learning how to express their imagination into words. At first was pretty hard for them tell some story. And at start i was giving the example.
Was telling my story and was involving them into it on the way, tricking them to shape the story with some details.
For example, if story would have three characters, then i would ask them to name them or tell what animals there were. “The Lion wore a shirt. I cant think of what kid of shirt it was warning…. Can you help me to think about what color the shirt was?”
Sometimes we are passing the story to next one to continue, then to next one and so one. Btw, this is also good activity to do in children parties, or on Halloween evening.
We recommend this to tryout. This trains children imagination and story telling skills.
When we get lazy we are retelling that days events. Trying to tell in smallest details possible so that we would train different words, adjectives. Even if it was routine day one can find some interesting details to tell.
Same as with stories, the day events can be passed around, so everybody tells some part of the day, what was happening. Not always whole day have been spent with kids, rather the other way round. For example:” Took you to the kindergarten, hugged and said goodbye. Then jumped in our silver car, that has black wheels. I dont know what happened in kinder-garden. Please, tell me what was happening till we met again in evening?”
One more way how to involve kids in stories is “wrong stories”. Usually i am retelling days events, and mixing up some parts with “fake news”.
For example:” In the morning we got up and went to bathroom to wash our teeth, we took toothbrush and put small amount of chocolate and started to clean up our shoes.”
Children:”No, no….. that was not what happened.” Then i ask:” So how it was really?” – then they retell same thing but corrected. Best thing is if if kids are retelling full sentence, not just wrong parts. This is really fun thing to do.
If kid is correcting only one thing “we brushed teethes, not the shoes”.
Then parent can restart the same sentence but mix up other parts:”So, in morning we woke up, went to living-room, took the toothbrush put small amount of chocolate on toothbrush and started to clean our teethes”… and so on till the sentence is fully corrected by children.
So these are some examples how we “force” our kids to talk, tell stories. Do you have some other interesting ways how to “trick” kids in retelling stories?
