Where do stories come from? Where do you encounter stories? What does it take to tell a story? Why are stories important for children? List the stories that you have encountered this week. What were they about? How can you incorporate storytelling into your day?

What have you learned that is new? What are the benefits of storytelling? Do you agree? How many types of stories (TV, books, family history, conversation) are available to your children? What are good topics for stories? What are meaningful objects that you know stories about or could create a story for? What are the advantages of changing a story around as you re-tell it? What are new storytelling techniques that you'd like to try?

Stories you might have encountered could be:

• About your childhood
• From your culture or that you remember from childhood
• About family history or names
• Inspired by a picture or object in the home
• About what they did over the weekend

The value of storytelling:

• Remembering loved ones/history/culture/tradition
• Building identity
• Learning what's important
• Remembering events/activities from their own experience

What do you think children learn from stories? What do they learn from telling stories? How does storytelling help language development? What about bilingual families? What is the importance of stories to family bonding?

Consider what you do with your kids. How often are they exposed to stories? How can storytelling help develop language and literacy? What would you have said if you were on the panel?

The benefits of storytelling:

• Helps to learn a second language
• Encourages parent-child bonding
• Opportunity for a parent and child to learn from each other
• Teaches how to predict events
• Practice for communication and language skills like sequencing and vocabulary
• Develops imagination, cooperation, and understanding

How and when is a good time to tell stories? Is there a story that your children like to hear repeatedly? Do you use props or miming? What stories do your kids tell you?

What can you do to make storytelling fun? How do objects and props help in storytelling?

Suggestions on how and when to tell stories:

• Use mime
• Involve children
• Act Out or Role Play
• Change voices and use inflection
• Include storytelling in bedtime routines
• Repeat the same story
• Use props, puppets, and/or dramatic play
• Collaborate with the child to tell the story

Here is your chance to think about how to apply what you've learned. How can storytelling enhance vocabulary skills? How can you make it more interactive?

What are techniques that can make repeated stories more interesting?

Main Points:

• Make props out of everything and anything
• Use props to expand the storytelling experience and emphasize new vocabulary
• Use descriptive language

What Kids Learn:

• Language development
• Literacy skills (learning story structure)
• Memory retention