Storytelling with Kids

When my big kiddo (now he's 9) was born, I spent a lot of time researching and looking for inspiration on kids rooms design. I was particularly moved by a photo of a nursery with reading corner: narrow shelves with beautiful board books on them, and above them big letters saying "READ TO ME". That was exactly was I intended to do: I was going to read to my child. And I did. I started reading to him from the day he was born (well, maybe I waited for when we brought him home), and I has been reading to him ever since. But my kid had a mind of his own, and soon enough he was participating in the reading activity in ways that I didn't anticipate. He chewed on some of the books (the most funny example was him chewing on "The very hungry cuterpillar", a book that tells about a caterpillar that... well, chews through a lot of things). He wanted to read books in certain order, not necessarily the one intended by the author. He wasn't interested in so...

One of the big challenges of telling stories with young kids is keeping the class concentrated on the story. Sitting still, listening attentivly might be challenging for young kids or kids with a certain temperament (or both). This is why I like to include active games as a part of a story time. Studies found that breaks of physical activity promote academic achievement, in this case, help kids to better concentrate on the stories they listen to, and to come with more stories of their own. One of the rules of our class is: "story first, play next". To make sure that we manage to follow the rule, I've even set up a timer: 5 minutes of story. Then we'll play a variation of dodgeball. In 5 minutes we've managed to quickly get through a short story by Terry Pratchett, and got to have the main course of today's session: dodgeball. Mom of one of the new students had joined us today, so we were two adults versus ten-something kids. It was an awesome activ...