Do you want to hold a storytime with children's books for your child and several other children? Here are some ways to make sure your storytime is so successful that you will want to do it on a regular basis, and your child wiil love listening to each book and story.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 1 hour
Here's How:
- Invite only as many children as the age of your child. For example, if your child is three years old, invite no more than three other children.
- Plan on a 20 minute storytime. This may be part of an afternoon of playing or you could invite the children for one hour, with 30 minutes for play, 10 minutes for milk and cookies, and 20 minutes for your storytime.
- The rule for a storytime is start with a short amount of time, expand the time as the children's attention spans increase, and always leave them eager for more.
- It helps if the children who are coming have a shared interest since that could direct your choice of books, whether the interest is "Blue's Clues" or bugs.
- Choose several short books to start with.
- Since you will probably be facing the children rather than sitting side by side, you will want to choose a picture book with good sized illustrations.
- Since the children cannot see the illustrations while you are reading the story, you may want to practice telling the story with the illustrations facing away from you before the children come.
- Another option is to pick a book with limited text so that the time it takes you to read it is not very long. This will become less and less of a factor as the children get accustomed to storytime.
- To give the children a chance to move around a little between stories, you may want to teach them a simple finger play like "Eency Weency Spider."
- After each story, help the children to reflect on what they heard by asking such open ended questions as, "What did you like best about the story" or "What do you think will happen next?"
- Depending on the group, it may help if before you start the storytime, you discuss appropriate behavior. With others, it may work better to simply correct any inappropriate behavior as it comes up.
- Don't ever think that holding frequent storytimes is more trouble than it is worth. With small children it can take quite a while for them to get engaged in an activity, even ones from which they benefit a lot.
- By holding a storytime, you are introducing children to new concepts and ideas, increasing their vocabulary and knowledge, and helping them to improve their listening skills.
Tips:
- Don't get discouraged.
- If your child is already in a play group, talk to the other parents about incorporating a storytime.
- Invite the other children and their parents to participate in suggesting children's books.
What You Need:
- children's books
