As Gerri gets out her bag of stories and songs the children all rush to the carpet and even pull the blue chair over for her to sit.
“Yeah, stories and songs,” shout Julia and Wyatt with great excitement and the biggest smiles across their faces.
The children all sit waiting in anticipation for the opportunity to not only see but hear the songs. The use of props such as the ‘5 Little Monkeys’ that are stuffed standing on a bed gives the children the opportunity to sing along, while making the visual connection. Gerri pauses at various times throughout the song to give the toddlers a chance to sing along. The use of a variety of different props for the same story or song keeps the children engaged with each song and story again and again.
Stories such as ‘Brown Bear’ use repetition in order to anticipate the words that are coming up next letting the children say the words out loud.
‘The Little Mouse,’ ‘The Red Ripe Strawberry,’ and ‘The Big Hungry Bear,’ uses the narrator to ask questions to the mouse. This is also a classroom favourite with all the toddlers who have passed through our program.
When our toddlers first started the program, they had smaller amounts of vocabulary and were not familiar with the stories and songs. Through the use of repetitive songs and stories their vocabulary has increased, thus expanding on language abilities.
The use of stories and songs give children a chance to learn new words and develop more complex language skills. Songs even make learning a new language fun.
The children are engaged in listening and memory skills, even when story and song time is finished, you will still hear them singing the songs around the classroom throughout their play. Overall literacy is developed in this fun and entertaining manner.
We continue to discover new stories and songs and love to listen to the children start singing these on their own. The children sit on the blue chair with a book or use marker lids on their fingers as props for the songs as they imitate their educators, and other children gather to listen.
Parents let your educators know if there are favourite stories and songs you share at home as we would love to incorporate these in our program!
