N is for Narrative (Storytelling): Building Skills How Tos

A narrator is a person who tells the entire story or 'narrative.'  In verb form, "I am going to narrate the story," means to read or tell the events from start to finish.  When it comes to a play or a story with dialogue in it, the parts assigned to the narrator are more specific. They are the one who tell the facts of the story and answer the questions like which character is entering the room with a scowl on their face.  They are the one who share the mood for the comments about to be spoken.  They tell facts like "It was a bright and sunny morning when Franklin met Beaver." The narrator is a key player who supports the characters in a story and connects the events for the audience.

If you want a child to narrate well, you need to make story telling fun so they put in the necessary practice to hone their skill set.  Here are FIFTEEN IDEAS.

CAMPFIRE STORIES: As it is summer, you can have a campfire (real or pretend) and tell stories around the campfire. They can be scary or funny, real or imaginary. The fun should be in the sharing!

BALL PASS: You can play a game of telling one sentence and having another person tell the next and so on until a story is created. You can pass a ball around a circle and whoever has it in their hands has to share the next section of the story or you can simply go around the circle.

STRUCTURES: You can practice sentence structure and put words in order so that the created sentence makes sense.  The individual words can be put on blocks or slips of paper. Use whatever is motivating to the child.

MAD LIBS: You can do MadLibs and fill in random words and create a silly story in the process.

STORY STONES: You can make story stones by gluing pictures of various items on stones and then pulling them out and creating a story based on them.  It can be one stone at a time or a few stones and then you put them into some semblance of order from which you can narrate a story.  Pictures are random.  They might pull out an umbrella, a penguin, a soccer ball, a sad face and a pizza slice and now have to make up a story using those five words in the story somehow.

TOYS: I have a bucket or characters such as those given in McDonald's Meals that I pull out and use to build a story.  For example, I could pull out Bert and Ernie and have them sing the "Rubber Ducky" song and take out a rubber ducky to add to the conversation. I could take the bucket of dinosaurs and have them plan a dinosaur stomp and narrate their dance party.  Use your imagination.

ABC VOCABULARY: Sometimes when I tutor I have them come up with words for each letter of the alphabet.  I choose a focus such as nouns, verbs or adjectives.  Then words are taken from their list and used in a story. ie. Nouns: Apple, banana, caterpillar, dog....GO!

PLAY HOUSE: Play house with toy houses, furniture and/or dolls and narrate the events of their day as you play

PUPPET SHOW: Narrate a puppet show.  Choose a topic and build up the story which the puppets will share in a show.  It can be written out and rehearsed or created impromptu.

STORY CUBES: Story cubes is a box set of dice with pictures. You roll the dice and narrate a tale based on what you see.

ACTING: Re-enacting Shakespeare plays or other simpler plays helps build your presentation skills of the narrations and use your character voices to share the story with added detail and emotion.  Movies and cartoons can also be acted out as the episode is retold.

MUTE BUTTON: Take a video and mute it and make up your own story of what is being said.  This can be done seriously or quite humorously.

CHARADES: Play charades and try to narrate an event using just body language or play pictionary and try to tell what is on your card using just pictures to tell the event.

PICTURE BOOKS: Turn the pages of a children's book and without reading any of the words tell the story of what you think is happening based on the pictures.

CREATE A MUSICAL STORY:  For the person in your life who loves music, tell a story using song. It can be original or using the foundation of something existing.  You could do a parody or make it a genuine work of art.

Enjoy these ideas and share more of your own in the comments section of the blog.  Your input is valued!