Tell Us A Story!

There are lots of ways to liven up story time, both for you and your little one!  Try some of these tips!

• Do the voices!  You may think you sound silly, but children LOVE it when you do the funny voices for different characters in the story you are reading!  Make them laugh, and they will enjoy reading, words, communicating and the story itself even more!
• Have a special time of day for stories.  This means you won't forget to have stories and you'll both get used to the time slot as part of your routine.
• Read in different places as a treat.  Hide in the shed and read a story or go out to the park with warm coats and some warm milk and read there!
• Theme your stories. If you know your little one likes farms, then get some farm or animal books and read them one day at a local farm!  Go look for pigs as you read about them in the book etc.  Bring it all to life!
• Keep them alert!  Ask questions as you go along: how many sheep in the field; What colour is the ball? etc.
• Recap at the end of the story.  Go over the story together to make sure they have understood.
• At the end, go back through the book together and find out which bits were best, which pictures were most fun, what happened next?
• Don't force them.  Encourage them to want to hear a story, but don't force them if they are overly reluctant otherwise they won't enjoy stories!
• Let them make choices!  Get them to choose the book themselves.  Look at it together and make sure its a good one etc!
• And, most importantly... have fun!