A long time ago there were no movies, TV sets, radios or CD players. There were no books, newspapers, or magazines - there was only storytelling. Stories have always been meant to entertain, and more importantly they were meant to instruct and empower. Ruthilde Kronberg and Patricia McKissack in A Piece of the Wind and Other Stories to Tell write, “It’s through stories that children first learn to unravel life’s complicated patterns and to understand their own and others’ culture, history, customs, values, and beliefs.” Storytelling gives children a way to express feelings that they find difficult to understand or verbalize, and can be therapeutic by helping children deal with problems.

Infants: Family Stories – Look to the stories of your own birthright, and try to understand the lessons they teach about your life and the world around you. These stories can give young children a sense of family, roots, and tradition. Tell stories about your own parents, when grandma and grandpa come to visit. Talk about holiday celebrations when taking children on trips to friends and family. These are the memories that are made together with young children by sharing traditions.

Toddlers: Library Stories – One of the best places to find folktales from around the world is your local library. These stories will provide food for thought and discussion. They also will provide ways to offer a temporary escape from reality into the world of fantasy, by distracting the mind and stimulating imagination. Encourage toddlers to repeat recurring phases and act out the story. Vivian Gussin Paley, author of 13 books on storytelling, stated in NAEYC Young Children’s Journal that adults should, “Think dramatically. Get in the habit of thinking of yourself and the children as partners in an acting company. Once we learn to imagine ourselves as characters in a story, a particular set of events expands in all directions.”

Preschoolers: Multicultural Folktales – These stories teach that all people are part of the family of mankind. Try to find stories that teach no one is better than anyone else. Teach children that people are more alike than they are different. Joseph Bruchac in Native American Animal Stories said that Native North Americans saw themselves as participants in the great natural order of life, related on some fundamental manner to every other living species. “Life was seen as a great circle; each life had a place on that circle and was related to everyone and everything beginning with creation, and ending not with death, but with a return to creation itself.” They spoke of their relationship to the earth in terms of family; mother earth is the source of life, father – the sun, and the animals were their brothers and sisters. This was their way of teaching respect for all.

Multicultural storytelling helps children to become kinder and more respectful to one another, and adults can teach moral and social values as a way for children to not only deal with one another, but with the dilemmas that confronts them.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS ABOUT PEOPLE CAN’T BE SEEN