Tell stories
Stories land best when the voice softens and the pace slows. The pictures below give you something to lean on while the body starts to settle and imagination takes the lead.
♀Telling stories
A person tells a story from a book.
About this visual support
Telling stories is not only about the words. It is the tempo, the voice and the pictures forming inside the child that actually lower the pulse and ease the move from day into night. With visual support to point at, it gets easier to keep your voice low, because you do not have to invent the next scene while also trying to calm the room.
The images work as anchors in the tale. The child gets to stay in one scene, look at it and build on it in their imagination before the next one arrives. That is where the winding down happens, in the pauses between pictures, not in the words themselves. A concrete trick: lay out three or four images in a row before you start, and move your finger slowly between them. The voice then signals that the evening has already begun to slow.
If you want to put together your own small story sequence, you can do it in Routined. There you can save favourite sequences and bring the same tale back when it is time to settle for the night.