Tip for parents: The 7-step guide to child development using teaching aids with children’s stories
Children’s stories are an excellent way to promote child development. You can use teaching aids along with children’s stories to teach moral lessons, factual knowledge, or emotional intelligence.
The beauty of using children’s stories in this way is that children learn without feeling like they are “learning”; They learn by osmosis.
Using stories to teach also makes children really think about things. They can become actively involved in the story instead of just passively listening or reading it.
So how can YOU use stories in this way? When you follow these 7 easy steps, you’ll find that using stories to teach is incredibly easy and fun too.
#1 Decide what you want to teach
What do you want your child or students to learn? How do you want them to feel at the end of the “lesson”?
#2 Ask specific questions about events or characters in the story
Questions like “why did this happen?”, “why did Santa do that?” or “how do you think Billy felt?” are good examples. Try to have the children “analyze” the story, think about why something happened and its consequences, the motivations and feelings of the characters, etc.
#3 Relate the story to the child’s own life/experiences
This is KEY: by doing so, the child will assimilate the lesson(s) of the story. It becomes more real and personal to the child. Ask questions like “how would you feel if…” or “have you ever felt like [character]?”
#4 Use supports and visual aids
This is particularly useful for teaching factual information (eg, anatomy), but you can also use it to provide visual clues that help children delve into the story (imagine it more easily) and remember it better.
#5 Get them physical
In addition to getting them to think, you can get them to act out the story, perhaps even creating their own version. They will really feel that history and its lessons are a part of them. Also, when children move their own bodies, the story becomes more real and personal to them. This also helps kinesthetic learners.
#6 Ask them to relate the story to the rest of the world
After getting them to relate the story to their own experience, you can really expand a child’s mind by having them relate the story to the larger world.
#7 Create a lesson plan
It’s obviously good to prepare, but you don’t need to spend a lot of time on it, and even parents can create a simple lesson plan. You can also find ready-to-use lesson plans and stories for children.
Conclusion
In my experience, “success” and “happiness” are not so much determined by talent and (technical) knowledge (although they are also important) as by character and emotional intelligence. By using children’s stories to help build character and emotional intelligence, you can set your children or students on the path to lifelong success and happiness.