Sharing stories together is a powerful way for children to make sense of the world, build their language skills, and connect with their culture and family - making it a vital part of early literacy development. Stories can be shared with young children in many ways, be it through books, play, art, music, everyday conversations or everyday routines.
Our 2025 research report Strengthening early literacy practice: Exploring story sharing in diverse, equity-funded kindergartens highlights how parents, kaiako, and whānau all play an important role in helping children learn about stories and storytelling. Here are some of the ways storytelling can be fostered.
Download these as A3 posters here - for parents and whānau | for kaiako.
Ideas for parents and whānau
- Sharing stories in different ways: Tell family stories, sing songs, dance, draw pictures, or act out favourite moments together. Use your home language/s and include cultural traditions—these are all valuable forms of storytelling.
- Encourage play: Children often tell stories through pretend play. Join in their games, let them lead, and ask open-ended questions like “Who was there?”, or “What happened next?”
- Use everyday moments: Everyday routines like mealtimes, car rides, and bedtime are great opportunities to talk about your day, share memories, or make up stories together.
- Celebrate your child’s creativity: Display their drawings, listen to their songs, and read their stories. Ask them to tell you about their artwork or play.
- Connect with your child’s teachers: Share stories from home with teachers and encourage your child to take special objects, books, or photos to their early childhood education (ECE) centres or kindergartens if allowed.
Ideas for kaiako
- Embrace multimodal storytelling: Encourage children to share stories through drawing, building, singing, dancing, and dramatic play—as well as through books. Children learn about literacy (making and sharing meaning) in many ways
- Build on home stories: Learn about children’s family stories, cultures, and languages through conversations with whānau. Invite families to share stories, traditions, songs, or objects from home.
- Create inclusive environments: Display photos, artwork, and stories from all children and their families. Draw upon resources that reflect the cultural and linguistic diversity of your community.
- Encourage child-led storytelling: Provide open-ended materials like everyday objects and art/craft supplies and allow time for imaginative play. Let children direct their own stories and support them as active storytellers.
- Use everyday routines: Create opportunities for storytelling and conversations in your daily routines such as mealtimes, getting changed, or indoor/outdoor play.
- Collaborate with families: Share learning stories and observations with parents. Encourage them to contribute stories or feedback, strengthening the home-centre connection.
Remember: Every child is a storyteller, and every family has unique stories. By fostering multimodal, and culturally rich storytelling as a kaiako, you help children develop language, confidence, and a strong sense of belonging in your centre. And by sharing your own stories as whānau, you help your child feel proud of who they are and where they come from. Storytelling builds confidence, language, and a strong sense of belonging.
If you want to know more about how children learn about storytelling at home and in their ECE settings, please check out our research here.