In all times and in all cultures, the stories told to the children have been the constant tonic, the stories, the stories, the stories, all have a message that is transmitted to the child through the explanation. There are many factors that intervene and help stimulate intelligence and develop language values, depending on the age the stories must be one way or another.
When the child is between 0 and 12 months old, the stories should be rhythmic and brief, babies do not have much capacity to attend and understand, for this reason the story should be short. The rhythm allows to capture the child's attention contemplating your expression, your movements and the tone with which you tell the story.
From 12 months to 24 months of age, stories should serve to stimulate the child by encouraging him to express himself better every time. From time to time it is convenient to introduce some new word and motivate the little one to repeat it, an appropriate way is to form songs with the new words, since through them the child can remember them better. The stories should be close and simple, you can use something common in the house, for example, if you have a puppy, start the story with, "Once upon a time there was a puppy ..." This allows the child to develop intelligence and relate and associate history links with everyday things he sees. When the child is already two years old, he loves stories, enjoys them and even more when his favorite characters intervene, the foods he likes most or situations he has already lived.
Of course, the plot of the story should be simple and many characters should not intervene, you can use a usual scheme that children find very easy to understand, such as a good character (the hero), a bad character (a witch) and an intermediary character that helps the hero. The child's attention during this age is relatively short, about 7 minutes, so the stories should not exceed this time so that they are not finally boring.
When your child is three years old, the child's evolution allows the stories to be longer and his attention is more easily captured when we introduce situations where he can find the solution by deduction. Also, if you introduce familiar characters into stories such as, grandfather, grandmother or uncle, you help him discover the people who love him and therefore he focuses much more attention. At this age the plot of the story must remain simple and clear and that the beginning and the end are well defined. The brevity of the story should also be a dominant issue, since the child still has a short attention span, about 10 minutes.
Thanks to stories and stories, the stimulation of intelligence, fantasy and curiosity are much easier tasks, and thanks to them, language development is much faster. Who has not enjoyed telling a story to his son ?, and more if we see the large amount of benefits that he reports.
