If only adults had half the imagination of the smallest children. When kids are off in the corner with their favorite toys, even by themselves, they are often telling stories. They do so in any number of ways: for instance, by projecting their emotions onto a doll, or by using a teepee or play gym to create a world all their own, with individualized roles and sets of rules.
Knowing a bit about how children tell stories not only helps parents understand their kids better, but it can make it easier to connect with them when they’re young.
Model Cars, Boats & Trains: Vehicles to Creative Thinking
Toys like model cars, boats, and trains – pretty much any vehicle – allow our littlest loved ones to tell more action-filled stories. Through a tiny rowboat they will create tales centered on travel, perhaps about what happens when you go fishing with a friend. Kids’ “busy boards” also get the youngest among us to tell stories in a fun, active way.
But storytelling isn’t happening in a vacuum. They are also developing vital skills, unbeknownst to them. A cool “fast track” with race cars gets 3-year-olds to think about the mechanics of objects in an adventurous way. Playing with a model vehicle will often lead little kids to develop their fine motor skills and problem-solve, too.
Exploring Emotions, Physical Control and Confidence
If you have a child over two, you may have seen them create narratives where vehicles race to the rescue, deliver goods, or embark on missions. You may have even seen sites of destruction and been the ambulance that shows up to repair things. These scenarios are probably not a sign of a daredevil career ahead. Instead, little kids often show toy cars crashing because it helps them explore intense emotions while reinforcing their understanding of cause and effect.
Dollhouses: Mimicking the World Around Them
One of the most popular storytelling devices is the dollhouse, which children use to create rich, imaginative narratives – often about families with children their age – that reflect their understanding of the world around them. If you get down on the ground and interact with them, you might learn a lot about how they perceive their siblings, friends, and even you.
With dolls and other figurines, they act out family life, friendships, arguments, and adventures, building histories that mirror or reshape their own experiences. By assigning personalities and roles to the miniature figures they are handling, kids learn to explore aspects of relationships such as conflict resolution that even adults don’t always understand. What we can do is make an effort to supply toys that are healthy and hazard-free, and then give kids the time and space to take advantage of their new playthings.
Play Theater: Experimenting with Dialogue and Emotions
The small-scale settings of a theater encourages a slightly different form of story-telling. When reenacting daily routines and dramatic events, children are experimenting with dialogue and emotions, but sometimes in a more visceral way. As long as they enjoy it, this form of storytelling helps them process personal experiences, explore different perspectives, and develop empathy and communication skills in a playful, hands-on way.
When repeated over and over, as kids’ plays often are, those communication skills can become more deeply embedded.
Even Learning Blocks Help Toddlers Tell Stories
Learning and storytelling go hand in hand at these young ages. Every set of educational shapes or learning blocks could end up creating a unique narrative in your toddler’s little head. That’s because storytelling comes naturally to the youngest people among us. What we can do as adults is find more ways to encourage this part of their brains to develop, even if we don’t entirely understand every story being created by our offspring.
Find More Travel-Friendly Toys at Wonder & Wise Online
Do you want to encourage your child to tell stories in a way that develops a safe sense of their own independence? Explore Wonder & Wise’s website for countless options aimed at kids of varying ages and personalities.
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