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Telling a Story

Learning to tell a story helps children develop skills in thinking and understanding:

  • Narrative skills include the ability to describe things; to tell events in order; to tell and retell stories.
  • Understanding how stories work, that stories have a beginning, middle and an end, is key to reading comprehension.
  • This section offers some ideas and activities to help your child develop narrative skills and reading comprehension.

Developmental Milestones

What comes next? Daily routines, including sharing books, help children learn about the narrative structure of beginning, middle and end.

Babies

  • May recognize and start to laugh at the first few words of a familiar rhyme.
  • Anticipate elements of a repeated nursery rhyme such as a tickle.
  • Enjoy playing peek-a-boo games.

Toddlers

  • May enjoy looking at one book over and over.
  • Recall events of the day.
  • May "read" to stuffed animals or toys.

Preschoolers

  • May like to play dress-up.
  • Can follow directions with three or more steps.
  • May make predictions based on the pictures in a storybook.
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