My husband, Sean Roys, helped to me with the narration of this story children’s story. Our first ever story narration project was when our oldest son and daughter were aged 2-5. Between the two of them, they had a handful of favourite stories which they repeatedly asked us to read to them at bedtime. We eventually grew tired of reading the same few stories over and over, but the kids never did. In fact, their interest and love for their special stories just seemed to grow and they loved helping us tell the story and turn the pages. They’d get so excited that they could tell what would happen next in the story.
So, we eventually made a home-made recording of their few favourite stories, complete with funny voices and our own sound effects, to save ourselves having to read and re-read the same stories over and over.
Young children really do love to re-read favourite stories and doing so fosters their development of the skill of prediction-making. This is an important part of their development of pre-literacy skills and supports them in learning to communicate their ideas on what they think will happen next in the story. Once young children know a story well enough to help tell the story and tell others what happens next gives them a context in which they can feel empowered and have a sense of control in knowing what will happen next and being able to describe what happens on the next page.
Sean and I so enjoyed watching and listening to our children’s reactions, that we eventually re-corded the stories with all their chatter and commentaries which were absolutely delightful. When our children got a little older, those home audio recordings delighted us all over again.