Teachers at YMCA Child Development Centre focus on our children’s love of listening to stories and their desire to tell stories.
At the heart of storytelling is listening – adults listening to children, children listening to their peers and adults, which contributes to a better understanding of one another’s ideas and being able to enjoy everyone’s stories.
Storytelling celebrates children’s ideas and encourages language development by introducing new words and practising words they have already learned. It provides a platform for children to recognise and understand pronunciations, sentence structures and helps to expand their vocabulary as well.
Aside from being a fun and interactive activity, storytelling also imparts key skills such as critical thinking, comprehension, and memory training. Storytelling helps our children to improve their memory when they pay attention and actively try to remember storylines, characters, and important details.
Without illustrations or visual aids, we create a space for children to explore creative thinking as they imagine the settings and characters. Most importantly, we use storytelling as an enjoyable medium for children to learn valuable cultural and moral lessons. This helps to build character at an early age. At our Centres, we aim to nurture every child into a community champion who serves to improve and empower the community.
