My daughter is 22 months old and in past few months she is combing words together while attempting to make sentences.
I am amazed at how quickly she is learning and how in just a matter of days, we see improvements in pronunciation and adding words to her vocabulary.
Toddler Storytelling
Prior to her being able to mix words, I had to act like I understood her completely. I asked many questions with the intention of trying to understand what she was saying and letting her know she had my full attention. I think this serves well in motivating kids to speak.
In our family we have many storytellers including myself. My dad, Don Tito shared great stories about his past experiences and my uncle Irving was the same way when it came to educating me on world history. Our daughter definitely feels the same way when it comes to sharing her experiences.
Taking advantage of her Storytelling Skill
My daughter stands next to me and shares what she did on her morning walk on the beach with mom. She will take a mix of nouns and verbs and unite them to a point where I get to understand 95% of what she is telling me. (The other 5% I ask mom).
I get excited and amazed every time she shares something with me. I guess as a parent watching your child grow is an experience that is very satisfying.
As my daughter continues to share her experiences, it gives me the opportunity to make corrections on pronunciation and help her with the correct words to form a sentence. Little by little, she is capturing these corrections and she is definitely implementing them in her way of speaking.
How do you motivate your children to tell stories?
I see a similarities between my daughter’s storytelling and what I am doing here via my blog as I share this experience with you.
Maybe one day she can be a solid blogger or whatever they call it when her time comes along.
It is truly amazing.
Great post Raul! I love when my kids tell stories too! I encourage them to create them with their drawings. I was amazed with Sophia once, when her pre-school teacher asked me to help her create a short story book with drawings about a public service employee. She chose the firefighter and applied everything she learned from it at school in a very fun and funny way, her style. She told me the story and I wrote it under her drawings. The teacher was so please on how I let her do it by herself and be creative. From there she loves to “read” just by making stories with pictures although is not really related with the book story…she makes her own. I am surprised every time with her creativity. She definitely learns faster with images. Now she studies her kindergarten with a method called LECCA which uses images for learning and is more like a homeschooling method, and she dominates every level so easy. Probably by encouraging her with images it has help her in school now. Thanks for sharing your story with the cutie Daniela! Kisses to her! 😀
I think as adults we might want to observe our kids better. So much we can learn from them on how they organize their thoughts with drawings! That process can help kids and adults get a better picture of what they need to accomplish.
Thanks for reading the post!
This is exactly the kind of early literacy environment every child needs! Your post warmed my heart! Talk, talk, talk! Lucky daughter! You also took me down memory lane. One of our children’s day (this one in particular) always ended with a few books and a story about a “little boy named Clark.” (That was him, of course.) He has grown to be an avid reader. Oral literacy is the foundation for all the rest.
@donna_stewart:disqus I wrote this more than a year ago… It was great to get such a positive comment from someone who understand this subject in such a profound way!