Children look forward to letting their imaginations run wild, especially during story time. Not only can reading inspire creativity, but it also has many developmental benefits for young children.
- It increases their attention span. Young children often have a hard time sitting still. When you read an entertaining book, this can help to calm them down and focus on the story at hand.
- It helps them process the spoken language. This is called auditory processing and it can help your students understand your direction as well as help them learn to communicate better with their peers.
- It teaches them to love books! Stories give children a drive to keep reading, which will improve their vocabulary, critical thinking and more.
- It increases confidence and decision-making. When allowing the children to ask questions and choose their own books, this makes them feel that what they do and say is validated.
Looking to make storytime more engaging? An exciting way to keep your students looking forward to story time, as well as further promoting their development, is to create story time baskets and boxes.
Prop baskets and boxes help children exercise their senses (sight, touch and hearing), encourage critical thinking and build imagination!
Here’s how you can create prop baskets or boxes for your favorite classroom books:
- Choose a few of your students favorite storytime books.
- Fill the basket or box with toys and items that can be used as props from the story, such as a stuffed animal or doll that reflects the character, pictures, costumes and objects from outside.
- When you read the story to your class, let them go through the basket or box and pull out the props that are relevant to what’s going on in the story. You can also have them dress up in costumes as the characters and act out the story as you read it.
- You can further promote learning by giving your kids a chance to re-tell the story (with their own twists!) by acting it out with all of the props. They will have a blast, and so will you!