Five simple ways to make story time come alive and engaging for children
Reading aloud and sharing stories with children of all ages is highly important, it can help many areas of children’s development. It can contribute to boosting their language development while inspiring them to enjoy books. Storytelling can help bring children’s imagination alive, developing curiosity, it can also enable them to become familiar with sounds, words and language. Children will often enjoy a story that has humour and full of different characters that they can become. Reading to children at a young age can help develop early literacy skills which will help them later on when they start to read and write. Below are some simple ways to make story time come alive and fun for children.
Story spoons
Have you ever tried to make these, they are very simple but effective. Children will enjoy using the spoons to tell the story. It can show them you don’t always need a book to tell a story. Using props like these enables children to play a part in the story, building on their confidence and self-esteem.
Story baskets
Why not find a basket and fill this with props that relate to a story, e.g., three pigs, a wolf, some bricks, straw and some twigs. Presenting the props in this way will be inviting for children, and they will enjoy using the resources to retell the story. It will help bring the story alive, creating further imagination and curiosity. Introducing props into story time can help other areas of children’s development for example building houses with the bricks can incorporate physical skills as well as maths.
Dressing up
Using dressing up clothes can bring story time to life, it helps children get into character and retell the story. Why not find different pieces of material and let the children make their own costumes instead of buying brought costumes, watching children make their own can give practitioners some great photos to use as observations.
Why not create props such as masks and other pieces of the story to use during story time. Children can take it in turns to use these props during the story. Using the props can help extend children’s language, providing them with opportunities to learn new words.
Take the story to a different environment
Reading stories in the garden or in a different environment can make story time more exciting as children often become more engrossed in the story, for example, retelling Going on a bear hunt outside can be more appealing than reading it sat in the corner of the room with a few cushions and a rug. Bringing a favourite story to live by re-enacting it outside is always a firm favourite with many children.
How else do you make story time fun in your setting?
Listed below are our favourite story prop sets –
- Handas Suprise set
- The little red hen
- The 3 little pigs
- The gingerbread man
- The Enormous Turnip