StoryLab- The Power of Stories on Childhood

If we are asked to describe our sweetest memory or our biggest achievement in life, I’m guessing very few of us will reply by stating the facts of that special day or describing the events with time stamps and accurate figures. Instead, we like to hold the attention of the listener by recreating the whole experience in the listener’s head. In short, we tell them our stories as best as we can!

Children instinctively love stories as it is their gateway to wonderful ideas they haven’t yet encountered. When a story is being told, things change dramatically. Not only are the language-processing parts of our brain activated, but up to seven regions flicker with light and activity. Researchers in Spain have found that narrative is infinitely more powerful than messages or facts. Cognitive science has long recognized narrative as a basic organizing principle of memory. From early childhood, we tell ourselves stories about our actions and experiences. Accuracy is not the main objective – coherence is.

When telling a story to a friend, you hold the power of transferring experiences directly to their brain.  They feel what you feel.  They empathize. When great storytellers are communicating most effectively, they can get a group of people’s brains to synchronize their activity.  If they relate someone’s desires through a story, they become the desires of the audience.  When trouble develops, they gasp in unison, and when desires are fulfilled they smile together. Telling stories has always been the best way to teach, persuade, and even understand ourselves. Our society has its foundations in storytelling. The way we interact, build, communicate, live and dream all derive from it.

At StoryLab, we take it a step further. By enhancing the engagement of a child through storytelling, we simultaneously make him live the story through activities. This allows the activities to leave a deep influence on the child, magnifying the overall benefit by up to three times as compared to just a normal activity session.

These activities are a variety of sensory and science activities enriching the sensory perception and developing an experiential validity of various scientific phenomena. The sensory play is a fine technique to impart various benefits to a growing child which include

• COGNITIVE GROWTH
  
• FINE MOTOR SKILLS
  
• PROBLEM-SOLVING
  
• BETTER SENSORY PERCEPTION
  
• SOCIAL INTERACTION

These activities involve recreating the scenarios from the storylike clouds, colors, bubbles and a lot more. Children get to engage all their senses through sensory play like exploring cloud dough, playing with slime and oobleck, color mixing and painting activities, motor skills like catapult, flying paper planes and wonderful science experiments such as smoky ghost bubbles, making colorful snow, shake and freeze etc. and through stories they learn so much about the world without the pressure of having to memorise it like the way different animals behave, their habitats, different types of colors, primary and secondary colors and types of chemical reactions!

Research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain’s pathways, which lead to the child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks. Many of these activities are very easy to do by yourself at home to help accelerate your child’s sensory growth. You can find a stepwise guide of making cloud dough which your child will thoroughly enjoy and explore the sense of touch with this new cloudy texture.

WonderLab’s efforts in the development of a child’s physical and psychological well-being are achieved through tried and tested scientific methods where a child feels involved in the process and develops a curiosity for the simplest aspects of the world around. StoryLab is our prime focus in the 6-day spring camp starting from 23^rd March 2018, where children enter into their worlds of imagination and live the stories through fun-filled activities and amazing experiments.