January Spotlight on Storytelling

You Have an Important Story to Share

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways we communicate, share experience and memory, and organize our world. While children are born without narrative skills, they quickly develop in the first years of life. What parents and caregivers do during these years is important in developing these early storytelling abilities.

By adding vocabulary and description to a child's experiences and world around them, you're helping build important language skills. Sharing bedtime stories, talking about the events you experience during the day, and telling stories about the past, the day your child was born, and your own experience or favorite stories as a child all help build narrative skills and a love of language.

Having narrative skills means being able to describe things and events and tell stories. This is an important pre-reading skill that all children need. As your child grows, sharing traditional stories that are a part of your family's heritage also gives them a sense of community and builds their sense of identity.

This month, stop by the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library's Birth to Six site for links to storytelling information, events, and suggested books for both children and the adults that care for them.

Keep the story alive!

Why start at the beginning?

Play around with stories! Narrative skills are an important part of early literacy. Narrative skills "is the ability to describe things and events and tell stories." Why is this important? Being able to talk about what happens in a story helps children understand what they are reading. This will help them build comprehension skills when they learn to read.

This new book, The End, by David LaRochelle and illustrated by Richard Egielski, plays with the concept of the beginning of a story and the end. Here, LaRochelle starts at the end!

"When a princess makes some lemonade, she starts a chain of events involving a fire-breathing dragon, one hundred rabbits, a hungry giant, and a handsome knight."

Have your own fun with stories:

• Make up silly stories!
• Ask your child to tell you a story.