Hello! It’s me, Gogo — Yizani Sifunde’s reading granny. Sharing stories is as natural to human beings as eating and sleeping!
Making time to tell your children stories can be fun and satisfying for everyone. It also lets your children know that you value spending this time with them. Storytelling has these other great benefits for your children:
It is a great way to teach children the life lessons you want them to learn. Great stories allow children to explore and think about things such as love, hate, jealousy, kindness, power, good and evil.
Storytelling stimulates children’s imagination and their use of language. They will learn more and more words and their meanings.
Stories can transport and connect them to the lives of people they’ve never known, who come from long ago and places far away.
Telling stories about your childhood experiences helps your children to connect with you. So, start with stories that you know. Also, think about which stories will interest your listeners and what is appropriate for their ages.
BOOK GIVEAWAY!
As we celebrate Nelson Mandela’s legacy this month, let’s all remember that one of his biggest wishes for our children was for them to experience the joy of reading. To honour that wish, we are giving away isiXhosa children’s storybook hampers (five books each) to 10 lucky readers and two lucky early childhood development centres (ECDs).
To win, email Gogo at support@nalibali.org with the subject line, ‘Molo, Gogo!’. Tell her what you did for the children in your community for Mandela Day. Please mention the name of your community and include your name, surname, contact details and physical address. If you’re entering on behalf of an ECD centre, please specify and include the name of the centre as well as the location.
These hampers are made possible courtesy of Yizani Sifunde, a literacy intervention project that aims to enforce the joy of reading for young children in Eastern Cape communities.
The project is powered by Liberty Community Trust and run by three prominent SA NGOs, Nal’ibali, WordWorks and Book Dash.
