Kisah Cinderella, Alice in The Wonderland, Timun Mas, atau Si Cerdik Kancil merupakan cerita yang disukai anak-anak sebelum tidur. Hasil sejumlah penelitian menyatakan bercerita kepada anak sebelum tidur mendatangkan banyak manfaat bagi hubungan orangtua dan anak. Berikut 10 alasan mengapa orangtua wajib menyisihkan waktu sekitar 15 menit saja untuk anaknya.
1. Cerita sebelum tidur dapat mempererat hubungan fisik dan emosional antara orangtua dan anak. Jika aktivitas tersebut dilakukan secara rutin, si anak akan merasa dicintai.
2. Cerita anak juga memiliki pesan moral yang kuat. Jika sulit mengajarkan pada anak soal hal yang baik dan buruk maka melalui cerita si anak cenderung menerimanya tanpa melawan.
3. Setelah seharian lelah bermain dan belajar, si anak juga perlu waktu relaksasi. Cerita bisa menjadi salah satu alat untuk membuat tidur anak menjadi lebih nyenyak, asalkan jangan bercerita tentang kisah-kisah seram.
4. Bercerita dengan menggunakan buku bisa membantu anak belajar huruf dan kata-kata. Sedangkan untuk cerita Bahasa Inggris, anak-anak akan mendapatkan kata-kata baru dan memperkaya perbendaharaan bahasa asingnya.
5. Dengan bercerita, anak-anak akan terpacu untuk menuliskan imajinasinya. Jadi jangan heran jika suatu waktu nanti mereka menjadi penulis.
6. Di tengah tayangan hiburan televisi yang tidak sehat, cerita bisa mengembalikan nilai-nilai yang dirusak atau dieksploitasi lewat tayangan tersebut.
7. Cerita bisa membangun imanjinasi dan empati anak tentang apa yang dirasakan oleh tokoh-tokoh dalam cerita tersebut. Berikan peran pada anak untuk memutuskan apa yang akan terjadi jika tokoh utama mengalami sesuatu hal.
8. Cerita membantu anak untuk menyukai buku bacaan sejak dini.
9. Cerita juga bisa membuat anak yang lebih tua untuk melakukan hal yang sama untuk adiknya. Mereka akan saling berbagi dan terutama hubungan di antaranya semakin erat.
10. Kehidupan tak selalu berjalan mulus. Melalui cerita, si anak akan belajar hal-hal yang tidak selamanya bahagia atau sesuatu yang selalu mereka dapatkan. Cerita juga bisa memperkenalkan jika di dunia ini ada hal yang jahat atau ketidakadilan. Cerita anak selalu berujung dengan kebaikan. Melalui proses ini anak akan belajar bahwa tujuan hidup ini tidak lain untuk berguna bagi sesama.
Sumber: liniberita.com
Story telling is an art that has mental, social and educational benefits on children. People of all ages love stories. Children are great fans of stories and love to listen to them. Storytelling literally means reading out stories to them or just telling a story from the memory to them. It is becoming a lost art today as many parents find very little time to spend with kids as the hustle and bustle of life demands them to reserve more time for the needs of life.
But any parent can preserve few stories for kids and spend a bit of time for them to tell them stories. Most of the parents ignore the importance of storytelling and are unaware of the advantages of storytelling. Let us see what all ways storytelling helps kids to learn and grow.
Children are born into a media-soaked environment today. They have numerous television channels and entertainment programs to get them engaged with entertainment. Parents switch on cartoon channels and keep children before them for hours. But, many a times they forget the disadvantages, such fast-paced visual media bring onto kids. Television cartons and other entertainment programs block the mental development of kids to greater extends.
All the television programs are designed for elder people, not for kids. Children may lose thinking capacities and analyzing powers if they are exposed to television, several hours a day. Children are slow to grasp and slow to think; thus they need entertainments specially designed for them. Storytelling is an activity that can transfer emotions and feelings and also can boost thinking capacity.
Storytelling is a great activity of learning. At each phase of the development of the story, kids ask questions. A proper teller can use tricks to make them curios and encourage them to ask questions. Storytelling is the basic training for academic learning. When they see images in the book and listen to the stories, kids learn to associate between images and story and later imagination and visuals.
You can increase the memory capacity of children by asking them to remember the stories you have already read for them or asking them to remember where you stopped the previous day. Always demand kids to share their contribution in the stories. Ask them to narrate a possible climax or encourage them to create a new story with the same characters in a story. Imagination is the key to creativity and children can be trained in many ways to develop stronger skills of imagination.
The most bulging benefit of storytelling is increased knowledge in children. They get to know about various places, practices in life, relationships etc., through stories. Most of the stories depict good and bad characters. Listening to stories will help children to have an idea of accepted style of behaviors and must to avoid acts. Stories also allow children to know about their own cultural roots.
Differences between cultures and various lifestyles are introduced to kids through stories. All the stories are informative to children, as being new to the world; they may know very little things about the life in the world. Stories help kids to visualize the plot and characters. Television programs block the imagination power of viewers, but stories are great help in boosting creativity.
Another advantage of listening to stories is that children grow in academic learning. Story telling introduces lot of new vocabulary to children. At homes, people communicate with limited number of words. But stories will have academic level vocabulary and lot of newer words for the kid to learn. It is easy to teach the meanings of the words as kids learn faster from the context of story.
Infancy is the period when children absorb most of the words they use in the future. Story telling also encourages children to participate actively in the learning process. It can enhance the listening skills of children. Kids love to talk instead of listening to anything. But this is not acceptable in the classrooms, thus storytelling gives them with the necessary training to listen and understand instead of talking.
Parents need to take care of certain aspects when reading out stories for children. If you want kids to listen actively and understand the story, you have to read out the stories emotionally. Change the pitch of sound according to the feelings and emotions depicted in the story. Use effective body language to convey ideas in the exact way. Perfect storytelling is acting out a story. Storytelling parents are found to have more emotional bond with the children. It teaches the children to be creative and make them dynamic thoughts and action.
Courtesy: www.prokerala.com
