From toddlerhood to the early teens, children love to hear a good story.

This is one of those beautiful situations where what your children love is truly good for them. Children benefit a great deal from storytelling. Without the use of books, telling stories takes on a different dimension. It offers a new way of looking at stories and is reminiscent of the old radio days, when families gathered around the radio to listen. But storytelling with a live human doing the telling can be quite compelling. How, exactly, does storytelling benefit children? Here are some possible ways in which this ancient medium can have a positive impact. Language Skills. As young children listen to a storyteller, they are hearing inflections in speech and are hearing words presented in a compelling and fascinating way. Older children can expand their vocabulary and learn drama skills that may serve them well if there is an acting career in their future. Storytelling also presents certain literary devices in a demonstrative and memorable way. Children will see and hear the building of plot, characterization, climax, conflict, conclusion, etc. Perhaps rhyme or poetic prose will be used to tell the story, allowing children to hear the way the language sounds and how that can add to a story. Memory. Without books or illustrations, children have to remember key points of the plot and character names. This is an excellent exercise in memorization skills, and it also may help guide children when they wish to write a story of their own. New Worlds. Storytelling opens childrens minds to other cultures and life philosophies; it develops the inner world of imagination and creative thinking. Children tap into that wonderful imaginative mind of theirs are they provide their own images to the plot. Storytelling is also a way to bring history alive and inspire further exploration of historical events. By the time most children are three or four they can tell many kinds of stories: autobiography, fiction, and reports they have overheard. They can tell stories with other people, and to other people. By the time most children are adolescents, stories both formal, conversational, and unspoken, pervade daily life. In adulthood narratives provide a form for organizing huge amounts of information and serve a host of powerful psychological and social functions. What goes on in the first three years to prepare us for this astonishing array of abilities? Children are born into a media-soaked environment today. They have numerous television channels and entertainment programs to get them engaged with entertainment. Parents switch on cartoon channels and keep children before them for hours. But, many a times they forget the disadvantages, such fast-paced visual media bring onto kids. Television cartons and other entertainment programs block the mental development of kids to greater extends.

All the television programs are designed for elder people, not for kids. Children may lose thinking capacities and analyzing powers if they are exposed to television, several hours a day. Children are slow to grasp and slow to think; thus they need entertainments specially designed for them. Storytelling is an activity that can transfer emotions and feelings and also can boost thinking capacity. Young learners share a remarkable variety of personal experiences, values and ways of understanding. The language they learn in the classroom is the tool they use to shape their thoughts and feelings. It is more than a way of exchanging information and extending ideas, it is their means of reaching out and connecting with other people. Stories can link not only between the world of classroom and home but also between the classroom and beyond. Stories provide a common thread that can help unite cultures and provide a bridge across the cultural gap. How is it that children are born with no language, let alone narrative skills, but that within 24-30 months most have learned the rudiments of story telling: how to sequence events, how to set action in place and time, and organize a story around characters. A Cultural Meet and Greet. Children are fairly new to the planet and storytelling teaches them a lot about the way life works around here. Through stories, they hear about characters who are good, bad and in-between. They see a dramatic representation of problems, how characters choose to solve them and the positive and negative consequences of those choices. They meet characters from their own culture and others, and become familiar with a range of customs, personalities and points of view. The stories of others can help children deal with their own life experiences, both big and small. A Social Experience. Unlike any television show, movie, video game or app, storytelling provides a fun experience for children with real, live human interaction. Caught up in the story's events as they unfold, children respond with emotional reactions and questions for the storyteller. They chime in with the storyteller's songs or other narrative tactics. Storytelling provides children with the opportunity to practice social skills such as listening, making eye contact and taking turns. Storytelling practice also enhances social competencies and develops the classroom community which reduces social rejection of students who are different. Childrens use of story is an effective instrument for teachers/adults to learn more about the child. What story they choose and how they choose to tell the story are indicative of what a child thinks and feels, expressed uniquely during a particular time period. The process of selecting, practicing and telling stories is a way for children to explore themselves and relationships between people. Children with a cultural experience with storytelling have a greater understanding of beliefs and mental states A Lesson in Telling their Own Stories. As children listen to stories, they become familiar with the art and practice of storytelling itself. They internalize the rhythms and tones of a storyteller's words and, through those elements, come to know what makes stories interesting, exciting, funny and sad. They learn through observation how to pair gestures and words to bring characters and their actions to life. They hear unfamiliar words whose meanings they can piece together through the context of the story, increasing

their vocabularies in a meaningful, lasting way. Regularly seeing public speaking in action, children become more comfortable with oral communication in general, helping them to tell their own stories in an effective way. A Key Ingredient of Literacy. Storytelling acts as fuel for the fire of literacy in a child's development. Hearing a story they love can inspire interest in learning more about a given topic. Stories tend to be addictive in the best way possible and can encourage children to read more stories and write them, too. Storytelling surreptitiously teaches children the elements of a story, helping them devise their own narrative beginnings, middles and ends. Storytelling is an excellent vehicle for relaying information and making it more memorable for both the teller and the audience. It can increase the confidence of the child who has difficulty in reading and make them more likely to try to read or write or even to read aloud. Storytelling helps develop the imagination which in turn builds on problem solving competencies. As children engage in storytelling they learn to listen, to participate in and understand narrative discourse and create a path to more sophisticated use of language, reading and writing in their every day lives. EMOTIONAL. Stories and storytelling help to develop positive character traits in children by promoting a sense of shared experiences and emotions related to the characters and challenges dealt with in the stories. Storytelling allows the child to act out the fears and understandings that are not easily expressed in day to day routine. Storytelling by children bridges home and school and brings cultural awareness into the classroom. Children use storytelling to successfully resolve traumatic experiences and the resultant anxiety. Telling stories has long been recognized as an important part of healing, self-knowledge, and personal and spiritual vehicle for connecting us to other people and to God it is a means for understanding ourselves and our place in the world. We conceive of our lives as a web of stories - a historical novel or a mini-series in the making. We tell stories in order to live. We use stories to construct meaning and communicate ourselves to another. Stories help us organize and make sense of the experiences of a life.

Stories are mighty, however, not only because we shape our lives through them but also because they have the power to unsettle the lives we have comfortably shaped by them. . . . Weaving together the human and the divine enables us to hear our own stories retold with clarity and new possibilities; our lives are transformed in the telling. Stories have the potential to build authentic communities of shared meaning and values.

Northwestern University Laoag City

In fulfilment of the Final Requirement in Humanities and World Civilization

STORYTELLING AND ITS EFFECT ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Prepared By: Tonee Marie F. Gabriel BSN III

Prepared For: Prof. Shermon Cruz

OCTOBER 2013

BUDGET: 21 students x Php. 150.00 = Php. 3,150.00

EXPENSES:

Food ( siopao) Php. 10.00 each x 100 pieces Juice (Refresh) Php. 60.00 per box X 10 boxes Props ( crepe paper, cartolina, marker, cloth) Jeepney rental Tricycle fare (to pick up ordered snacks & buy refreshments) Prices ( pencils, notebooks, bag of crackers, bag of candy)

= Php. 1,000.00 = Php. 600.00 = Php. 300.00 = Php. 500.00 = Php. 150.00 = Php. 500.00 --------------------Php. 3,050.00

TOTAL:

REMAINING BALANCE:

Php. 100.00