Our subconscious mind plays a vital role in life whether we realise it or not. Let’s put it this way. You signed up for a yoga class. On day one, you learn to do a leg split in yoga class. At first, you might feel the pain and soreness around your thigh. As days go by, you keep on practising it every single day until you feel at ease doing leg split. Why? This is because our body has muscle memory. It is like riding a bike. This is the same as our mind. When we keep on practicing it or pouring the same thing into our mind, it will ingrain in our subconscious mind which will indirectly affect our behaviour and attitude lifelong. A child’s mind is as delicate as a flower. That is why developing a child’s brain matters so much. Malaysian government had allocated the largest funding for the education sector, a whopping Rm50.4 billion for the 2021 budget as education is very important for our country’s future. A child can be easily moulded from young. That is why storybooks are also important to educate the young ones.



                                                                                                   


Storybooks are important to foster a child’s imagination and curiosity which will lead to creativity and innovation. Reading storybooks to a child at a much younger age helps to spark imaginations as storybooks are fictions that will help them to think out of the box and not confined into a rigid thinking. Our world needs a lot of creativity and innovation to move forward and life will definitely improve. Needless to say children are our future. We depend on our next generation to lead the world and make this place a better place to stay. A powerful imagination is needed to create innovative gadgets to make our life easier. Imagine we are still living in a world where Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone or how people are still washing the clothes by hand. That is so inconvenient and we will never improve our lives. Aside from that, early exposure to storybooks and reading storybooks to children will help them develop their cognitive skills. The nature of storybooks are fictional and very different from reality. Children can learn to be attentive to the storytellers as they are curious on what is going to happen next in the story read to them.



                                                                                                             

Early exposure to storybooks and storytelling for children will increase their vocabulary and speed up learning the language. Subconsciously, children will be proficient at the language in no time. Through storytelling children can hear the correct pronunciation of the word and learn from it. When the adult reads stories, children learn by listening to them. Undeniably, language plays a pivotal role in ensuring children understand well in school and grasp quickly at multiple subjects. It will be unfortunate if the child has displayed a potential in studies but because of hindrance in language, the child is left behind in studies. A great loss to the nation! Storytelling also stimulates the passion for reading the book themselves and thus, cultivating the love for reading.  


                                                                                             

Shaping moral values into young children with the help of storybooks and storytelling by using correct intonation and explanation. Children might interpret differently for each story depending on their level of maturity and thinking. It might also be because of their background. That is why these responsibilities fall on the shoulder of the adults to do storytelling and at the end of each storytelling, adults should include a good conclusion and the true moral values that are good for the children. Let’s take the example of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which is one of the famous storybooks for children written by the Brothers Grimm published in 1812. Children might interpret wrongly about stepmothers and deemed all stepmothers are evil. The important lesson to learn from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the danger of vanity. Everyone has their own values and we do not need to compare with each other. If we are too vain and jealous with the others, we will not be happy. We should be contented with what we have. Explain it to the children to make them understand and seed it into their subconscious mind to do good every now and then. They will grow up kind and have strong empathy towards others which are qualities considered to be essential for a person’s emotional intelligence. 

 

Storybooks give children a good head start in life and already proven its value. Even adults can read storybooks to enhance their imagination entering the world of fantasies and to escape from the reality to experience relaxation from their life once in a while. I believe shaping the subconscious mind is a lifelong process...from cradle to grave. You read, you learn. 

Citation:

Dr. Bruce D.Perry. How Young Children Learn Language.

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/how-young-children-learn-language/

 

Lev Semenovich Vygotsky(2004, Jan). Imagination and Creativity in Childhood, pp7-97.https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1927/imagination.pdf

 

Olga Dolzhykova(2014). Teaching English Through Storytelling to Young Learners.

https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/40077/Masteroppgave_Dolzhykova_spring2014.pdf

 

Sara Miller and Lisa Pennycuf(2008, May). The Power of Story: Using Storytelling to Improve Literacy Learning. Journal of Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives in Education Vol. 1, No. 1,pp 36-43. https://wmpeople.wm.edu/asset/index/mxtsch/storytelling

This article is written by:

Tan Hong Lynn (tanhl@pelangibooks.com)

 

Illustrator:

Mohd Rosdi Bin Abdul Karim (mohdrosdi@pelangibooks.com)