Engaging Your Child’s Imagination: Story-Based English Learning Activities

Learning a new language can be a challenge at any age. But for your kids, there are added obstacles from everyday distractions, short attention spans, and a lack of motivation to learn a language.

Helping your kids see the benefits of learning English can feel impossible. But, that can all change when you understand how children learn best and what motivates them to participate.

Using stories can be the gateway to piquing your child’s interest in learning English. Plus with stories, there are endless possibilities of stimulating, educational, and most importantly, fun activities for your child to do.

From games to drawing, and role-playing to word games, there are many story-based English learning activities to engage your child whilst improving their English language skills.

Here I share with you various story-themed activities that you can do with your child at home:

• Develop and improve their English language
• Encourage and reward their interaction
• Form a stronger, positive relationship with your child
• Help them enjoy the process of learning.

Table of Contents

• The Power of Stories in Language Learning
• Creating a Language-Rich Environment At Home
• Story-based English Learning Activities
• Storytelling Sessions
• Story-based Crafts and Games
• Hands-on and Play-based Learning
• Interactive Story Apps and Websites

The Power of Stories in Language Learning

Before we get stuck into activities you can do with your kids, let’s recap why stories are compelling in teaching kids a language.

Stories have been used for many, many years as a means of sharing traditions, lessons, morals, and more. They were extremely effective in sharing knowledge verbally.

Nowadays, stories, of course, are accessed in a variety of forms such as through written books and media such as podcasts and animations. Not only do they expose children to a new language, but they also stimulate growth in other areas such as cognitive and social development.

Using appropriate stories enables your children to learn English with age-appropriate, child-friendly language, from learning new vocabulary to viewing accurate grammar. 

Stories help children form a meaningful connection with their learning, making it easier for them to understand when compared to learning a list of vocabulary words, for example.

Related blog post: The Power of Storytelling: How Stories Can Enhance English Language Learning

Creating a Language-Rich Environment at Home

First of all, it is important to ensure your home is set up in a way that makes learning accessible to your children.

Now, I don’t mean needing to buy an expensive set-up, fancy teepee, or have a room dedicated to their education.

What I am referring to is simply making sure your children can reach potential resources and know where they can go if they want to study.

For example:

• Can your child reach books appropriate for their age and English level? Or are the books up on a high shelf?
• Can they sit down with a book somewhere or create a book-related craft?
• Do you have vocabulary words written around your home that they can refer to?
• Is there a daily routine set up so that your children know what is expected of them?

Offering a range of simple resources can provide daily exposure to English for your children. With books at their eye level, vocabulary flashcards for things they use daily, a list of online apps or websites they are allowed to use, and so on.

A routine is also extremely beneficial as it helps your children know what you expect from them and when they will be completing different tasks throughout the day. Routines do not have to be long, think 15 minutes per activity. It is also a good idea to incorporate activities into the everyday routine you already have.

Here are some examples of ways you can incorporate learning English with your kids every day:

• Ask them familiar questions or say phrases in English in place of your native language e.g. “How are you?” “what would you like for breakfast?” “it’s raining today”.
• Place flashcards around your home on different everyday materials e.g. next to the bananas, in the bathroom next to their toothbrush, by their toy box, and so on. 
• Dedicate time each day to read a story or chapter of a book together and complete a story-related activity. This could be a comprehension quiz, arts and crafts session or a fun game like a story-related scavenger hunt. 
• Create conversation cards to be used at dinner time. Pick one at random to discuss together as a family.
• Read a bedtime story in English to your children.

These activities help provide your children with daily exposure to the English language, in short increments throughout the day. They offer no pressure, involve daily routines many families have in place already, and, incorporate fun, hands-on learning providing a positive learning experience.

Story-Based English Learning Activities

Here I will take you through some story-based English learning activities that don’t require lots of resources, planning, or time. What they do include is a focus on active learning, fun and hands-on activities. This leads to higher participation rates, increased motivation and willingness to learn, plus promotes a healthy relationship with learning English.

Storytelling Sessions

When supporting your child to learn English as a second language, storytelling should involve more than simply reading a story to your child. Reading a story to your child focuses on passive learning. Your child simply listens to the story, but otherwise does not engage with it or you. This can help improve their listening skills and gradual understanding of new vocabulary through context clues. But without interaction, it will take a long time for your child to show improvements.

Storytelling alongside discussions and story-related activities will lead to faster results and a much stronger understanding of English. Plus, it enables you to have quality time with your children which is important for their development and wellbeing. 

So how can you put a storytelling session together that will yield results?

Pre-Reading

First, involve your children in choosing a story together. Make sure to offer choices that aren’t too challenging for them, otherwise they will lose motivation to participate. Similarly, don’t offer books that are too easy for them as they will quickly lose interest. 

Look at the story together and discuss elements from the graphics and title. You could ask questions such as:

• What can you see?
• What’s the title of the book?
• Can you think of another title based on the front picture?
• What do you think will happen?
• Can you guess any other characters we might meet in this story?

During Reading

Next, read the story together. Take it in turns, choose which characters to be, or, if your child is not willing to read, read the story to them. The key here is to make storytelling fun and low-pressure. Often, when children feel pressured, it can lead to increased anxiety and resistance to participating at all. 

Whilst reading, model reading fluency by pronouncing words accurately, reading with a good pace, and using intonation. To engage your child’s attention even further, I would also over-emphasise particular elements of a sentence e.g. when onomatopoeia is present and giving characters different voices and personalities. 

As you read together, ask questions to assess your children’s comprehension and develop their critical thinking skills. For younger or lower level students, focus on questions such as who, what, where, when e.g.

• Who is this? (pointing at a character in the book)
• How many chocolate eggs can you see? (for example, if you’re reading an Easter story)
• What is (character’s name) doing?
• Where are they?
• When will they (choose an action e.g. eat the cake, ride a bike, see their friend)

These early comprehension questions help to assess whether your children know what is happening in the story and begin to recognize characters, settings, and plot details.

For children who find this easy, you can ask more questions that help your children analyze what is happening in the story, relate to the characters, and use different tenses. Ask questions such as:

• How did (character) feel when (state something that happened)?
• Why did (character) do (add an action)
• Explain what (enter vocabulary word) means.
• Compare what happened at the beginning of the story to the end. (You can also ask comparison questions relating to settings, characters, etc).
• Share what problems (character) faced in the story. How did they solve these problems?
• What would you do if you were (character)?

(Top Tip: I highly recommend referring to Bloom’s Taxonomy. This will help you adjust the questions you ask your children depending on their English level).

Post Reading

After you have finished reading a story together, there are many activities your child can enjoy that will help review vocabulary learnt, assess their understanding of the story, and provide opportunities for further speaking practice. Here are some post-reading activities to do at home:

• Complete a book review, either verbally or in writing
• Design and label characters or settings from the story (label with adjectives, or write quotes from what a character said in the story)
• Role-play sections of the story
• Take turns in hot seating (one person pretends to be a character from the story. Other people ask that person questions for them to answer from the character’s perspective)
• Discuss any morals or lessons the story might have been teaching and how this relates to real life.

Story-based Crafts and Games

Storytelling goes hand in hand with crafts and games – and kids LOVE them!

They are fun, aren’t traditional forms of learning, and enable your children to express themselves, share their imagination, and develop their creativity. 

After reading the story together, crafts and games provide further opportunities to reinforce what you had discussed together. They enable children to review vocabulary, answer questions, retell the story, and incorporate their ideas. 

Here are some crafts and games that are ideal for English learning:

Story-based Crafts

• Build a scene from the story by making a shoebox theatre. Once it is complete, add the characters as finger puppets, wooden dolls, or cardboard cutouts and retell the story.
• Create a story map – use a piece of paper and draw a curved line from the top left-hand corner moving from left to right till you reach the bottom right-hand corner. At intervals along this line, draw pictures of key events within the story, ensuring to capture the beginning, middle, end, and any climaxes. A short sentence or two can be added to describe each picture, but this isn’t necessary.
• Design a comic strip of your child’s favourite part of the story.
• Decorate stones with pictures from the story to create story stones. Use these stones to retell the story and for your kids to create their own version.
• Make a sensory tray that relates to the story for your children to explore – these are particularly effective for younger children and children who learn best kinetically. Here is an example using The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A sensory tray might include:
  • Felt items for children to build the caterpillar
  • Toy food and real food e.g. cut pieces of fruit and a paper picture of the caterpillar’s face with a hole for its mouth for children to feed the caterpillar
  • 7 tubs with paper labels for children to put the food and days of the week into the correct order according to the book
  • Butterflies and a magnifying glass or mirror for children to see the patterns and symmetry.
• Create a story collage gathering different materials, pictures, and resources to build a collage that represents the story e.g. including core colours, recreating the settings, adding character details and items from the story.

Story-based Games

• Tic Tac Toe / Noughts and Crosses using vocabulary from the story. Take turns to choose a word and make a sentence.
• Word games such as scrabble, word searches, and crossword puzzles
• Retell the story using a story dice.
• Create a story-related trivia board game with a simple game board, dice, counters, and trivia cards with multiple choice questions.
• Make a scanger hunt based on the story for your children to either read the clues themselves or listen to the clues to find the correct answers. You could even have activity stations set up in different areas once a clue has been found e.g. gingerbread decorating for The Gingerbread Man story or building a house with bricks for The Three Little Pigs.
• Play Guess Who with characters from the story.

Related Post: 15 Interactive Storytelling Games for Children Learning the English Language

Not every child will love every activity suggested, and that’s ok. Perhaps your children do not enjoy getting messy and the thought of arts and crafts is quite stressful for them. Instead, pick some of the paper-based activities or some of the game suggestions. 

Hands-On and Play-based Learning

Both hands-on and play-based activities help motivate children to engage with their learning. They offer active participation and provide a multi-sensory experience which improves children’s retention and helps them process what they are experiencing.

Many of the previous activity ideas shared in this post already interlink hands-on and play-based learning. But here are some additional activities that will provide your children with a full multi-sensory approach to learning:

• Dress up as characters from the story and act out different scenes.
• Complete drama-based activities and games e.g. using props, freeze frame (where your children choose a scene from the story and hold their position as if frozen), and character interviews.
• Cook recipes that relate to the story you were reading together e.g. baking bread for The Little Red Hen, making a fruit salad for The Very Hungry Caterpillar, making marmalade sandwiches for Paddington Bear, or porridge for Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
• Create STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) challenges from stories. Some ideas could involve:
  • Colour mixing experiment for The Day The Crayons Quit
  • Make a skeleton using black paper and earbuds for The Funny Bones
  • Sort and classify animals for Dear Zoo
  • Make repeating patterns and symmetrical designs for The Very Hungry Caterpillar
  • Build an upcycled guitar for Pete the Cat
  • Explore different types of music and create your own rhythm and dances for Giraffes Can’t Dance.

Additional activities that are multi-sensory and beneficial to reinforce language development that I have previously mentioned include:

• Sensory trays
• Hot seating
• Making a diorama e.g. shoebox theatre
• Designing characters and settings.

Interactive Story Apps and Websites

Although compared to our other activities, story apps and websites are not always as multi-sensory, they still have many benefits.

Story apps and websites incorporate technology, which is essential for your children to learn in this modern day and age. Interacting with technology can aid hand-to-eye coordination, and develop typing skills, problem-solving skills, and research skills. 

When choosing to use apps or websites, make sure to research them first so that they are level and age-appropriate along with being child-friendly. Many websites also include additional materials such as worksheets or digital games that link to the stories shared.

Here is a list of 28 apps where you can access English language activities for your children.

Free Digital Stories

• Storyline Online: Storyline Online features videos of well-known actors reading popular children’s books aloud. Each story is accompanied by animated illustrations, making it engaging for young readers.
• Storynory: Storynory offers a collection of free audio stories for children, including fairy tales, myths, and original stories. The stories are available to listen to online or download for offline listening.
• International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL): The ICDL is a digital library that offers a diverse collection of children’s books from around the world, available in multiple languages. The website allows users to browse by age, genre, and language, and all books are free to read online. 
• Project Gutenberg: Project Gutenberg offers a vast collection of free eBooks, including many classic children’s books that are in the public domain. Users can search for specific titles or browse by category to find children’s literature.
• Free Kids Books: Free Kids Books provides a wide selection of free eBooks for children, ranging from picture books to chapter books. The website offers books in multiple languages and allows users to download eBooks for offline reading.
• Magic Keys: Magic Keys offers a collection of free online picture books for children, organized by age and reading level. The website features colourful illustrations and engaging stories that are suitable for young readers. Website: Magic Keys
• Oxford Owl: Oxford Owl offers free eBooks for children, including a range of fiction and non-fiction titles. The website allows users to filter books by age, genre, and series, making it easy to find age-appropriate reading material.
• Bedtime.com: Bedtime.com offers a selection of free bedtime stories for children, including classic tales and original stories. The website features audio recordings of the stories, making it ideal for bedtime listening.
• Tar Heel Reader: Tar Heel Reader provides a collection of free, accessible eBooks for children with disabilities. The website features simple stories with text and images, and users can customize the text size and colour for accessibility. 
• Storyberries: Storyberries offers a wide selection of free children’s stories, including fairy tales, fables, and original stories. The website features colourful illustrations and engaging storytelling, making it suitable for young readers. (Also available in app form).
• Free Children Stories: Free Children Stories provides a collection of free, downloadable eBooks for children, featuring classic tales, fairy tales, and educational stories. The website offers a variety of reading materials suitable for different age groups and interests. 

Free Story-based Apps

• Google Play Books: Google Play Books provides a selection of free children’s books that can be read on Android devices and iOS devices using the Google Play Books app. Users can browse the free books section for a variety of children’s literature, including classics, fairy tales, and educational books. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play
• Libby, by OverDrive: Libby is a digital library app that allows users to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from their local library for free. The app offers a selection of children’s books, including picture books, chapter books, and educational resources, which can be borrowed and read on smartphones and tablets. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play

Paid for Story-based Apps

• Epic: Kids’ Books & Educational Reading Library: Epic is a digital library app that provides access to thousands of children’s books, including picture books, chapter books, and educational resources. While it offers a subscription service, it also provides a selection of free books for kids. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play
• Amazon Kindle: The Kindle app offers a variety of free children’s books that can be downloaded and read on smartphones and tablets. Users can access classic tales, picture books, and other children’s literature for free with a Kindle Unlimited subscription or by browsing the free books section. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play
• FarFaria: FarFaria offers a vast library of children’s stories for kids ages 2 to 9. The app features a range of genres and themes, including adventure, fantasy, and educational content. FarFaria provides access to a selection of free stories, with the option to unlock unlimited access to the entire library with a subscription. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play
• ReadingIQ: Kids Reading & Learning App: ReadingIQ is an educational app that offers a vast library of books for children ages 2 to 12. The app includes a selection of levelled readers, picture books, chapter books, and non-fiction titles. ReadingIQ offers a free trial with access to a limited selection of books, with the option to subscribe for unlimited access to the full library. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play
• Starfall Learn to Read: Starfall Learn to Read is an educational app designed to help children develop reading skills through interactive stories and activities. The app features a systematic phonics approach, with a range of levelled readers and educational games that reinforce reading comprehension and fluency. Starfall Learn to Read offers a free version with access to select content, as well as a subscription option for full access to the app’s features. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play
• Vooks: Vooks is an innovative streaming service that offers a unique approach to children’s storytelling. Unlike traditional eBook or audiobook platforms, Vooks brings storybooks to life through animated illustrations and narrated storytelling. With a focus on engaging visual content and immersive storytelling experiences, Vooks provides children with an interactive and captivating way to experience their favourite books. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play
• Tales2go: Tales2go is an audiobook streaming service specifically designed for children. It offers a vast library of audiobooks, including classic stories, fairy tales, and educational content. With a focus on literacy development and language skills, Tales2go provides children with access to high-quality audio recordings of popular children’s books, allowing them to listen to stories anytime, anywhere. Download on the App Store / Get it on Google Play

By incorporating a variety of story-based English learning activities into your child’s routine, you’re not just cultivating their language skills but also igniting their passion for learning. These activities incorporate research-backed methodologies that support language acquisition and retention.

By making learning relatable and enjoyable, these activities provide children with multi-sensory experiences and context-rich environments that enhance their understanding and fluency in English.

Selecting a mix of these suggested activities ensures your child’s active participation and intrinsic motivation to learn. By integrating them into your everyday routines, you’re creating opportunities for consistent, daily practice that sets the stage for success.

So, whether it’s reading a story together, engaging in hands-on crafts, or playing language-based games, these activities not only make learning fun but also lay the foundation for your child’s language development journey.

Watch as your child’s language skills flourish with each immersive and enjoyable learning experience whilst increasing their love for stories and learning English.

Related Posts

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The Power of Storytelling: How Stories Can Enhance English Language Learning

Bilingual Storytime: Tips for Using Dual-Language Books to Learn English

Creating a Storytelling Routine: Incorporating English into Your Family’s Daily Life