Storytelling Tips

LiFE invites you to become a storyteller par excellence—a Scripture storyteller! Perhaps your greatest challenge—and we hope a great joy as well—will be to make God's story come alive in the minds and hearts of your children each week. If, however, you doubt your worth as a storyteller, take heart! Most good storytellers have not inherited a special gene; they've succeeded through persistence and practice. That's what LiFE challenges you to do this year.
Although you'll find some visual aids for storytelling in your leader's kit, there really is no substitute for a dramatic story, simply told. When you do use visuals, make sure they don't distract the attention of listeners and diminish their imaginative involvement with the narrative. As you tell Scripture stories to your young listeners, it's helpful to remember that these stories were written down under the Spirit's guidance; they've been told for generations by parents and grandparents to their children and grandchildren. Picture yourself telling these stories in the same way they've been told through the generations—faithfully, in a way that reflects the key message and intent of the story. Faithfulness is more important than word-for-word accuracy. Tell them trustingly too—believing that the Spirit given to and dwelling in you will guide you in telling each story to your group of children.
Jesslyn De Boer, one of the authors of LiFE materials for Preschool and Kindergarten, offers the following helpful tips for effective storytelling from her own experience:

1. Prepare well. Read the story through several times—for your own pleasure and to acquire a sense of the story sequence. (Don't memorize it.) Then let yourself go, telling it smoothly and dramatically in your own words.

2. Establish a routine for putting the children in a listening mood. (We've given some suggestions within the sessions, but feel free to introduce a method of your own.)

3. Experiment with characterization. In your preparation, try visualizing each personality in the story. Then, as you tell the story, give each character a particular voice or gesture to make that person come alive in the minds of your little listeners. Don't hesitate to try some first-person narratives too.

4. Vary your position and make good use of gestures. Surprise the children occasionally by changing the place in which you usually gather to hear the story; for a change of pace, tell the story standing up instead of sitting down.

5. Identify the climax of the story before telling it. Then save your energy for that part of the story, building toward it gradually and purposefully.

6. Make use of silence and pauses as an invitation to your listeners to ponder parts of the story—or to anticipate what comes next.

7. Highlight emotions and feelings as you tell each story; invite the children to feel as they listen, to empathize and identify with the characters in the narratives. And let the children sense how deeply you yourself are moved by the stories of Scripture.

Elaine Ward, author of The Art of Storytelling,comments on the power of good storytelling to nurture faith in listeners:

Stories have power to persuade the head and move the heart. They provide us our sense of identity and mission. They heal by presenting hope; they inspire by showing possibility; they guide by inviting us into the story to participate. They delight and feed our faith imagination. As master storyteller Hans Christian Andersen said, "Without the ability to be at home in the world of thought, intuition, and imagination, a boy or girl will never have a deep feeling for religion."

As you tell God's stories to your little ones, we hope those stories will come alive and fill their minds and hearts with delight, wonder, and praise!

Back