I like to keep our story-telling times interesting and a bit different so from time to time I’ll play an audio version of a classic children’s story for our story time. An important key to successful and meaningful story times with young children is keeping them engaged.
This week the children selected the audible story version of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle. As we listened to this classic story, I mimed the story with facial expressions and hand motions. Then I invited the preschoolers to copy me and we had lots of fun and everyone was busy and engaged. We pretended to use binoculars to look for food, we counted along with our fingers, we pointed to our word wall for the different days of the week. We pretended to munch, chomp, and chew. We used our hands to make the little caterpillar ‘pop’ out of the tiny egg and then eat and eat. We stretched our hands and flapped our arms to make butterfly wings.
Short story sessions that actively engage little ones can do a lot to help instill a love for stories, books and build strong pre-literacy skills. Happy story-telling!