4.4.1: Caregiver Goal- Enjoyment

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Storytimes are fun! But they aren’t just fun. Enjoying activities during storytime can help prepare children to enjoy school. For example, participation in enjoyable activities can contribute to children’s intrinsic (self-driven) motivation and self-efficacy (belief in one's ability to succeed at tasks) (Koops & Kuebel, 2018).

There are generally three things research shows you can look for to see if children are enjoying an activity (Koops & Kuebel, 2018); keep in mind not all children, especially those 3- years-old or younger and children with disabilities or developmental delays, express enjoyment in these ways.

Affective [emotional] behavior: Are they showing positive emotions by smiling or laughing?
Continuation responses: Do they try or ask to repeat an activity?
Participation: Are they participating by listening, vocalizing, or moving in ways appropriate to the activity?

Ask yourself these questions as you go through storytime activities old and new, and plan to repeat the activities that bring the most enjoyment to the most children. As an added bonus, repetition helps children learn!

Enjoyment is often linked to engagement. Studies have shown that children are the most actively engaged during shared reading when they sit close to the reader (Paciga et al., 2015) and when their caregiver sits close to them (Campana, Kociubuk, & Mills, 2020). If your caregiver attendees are used to sitting in the back or in an outer ring around the inner circle of you and the children, try changing things up by verbally encouraging caregivers to sit with and participate along with children by sitting in a cluster arrangement (see figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). Take away most of the chairs but leave some for caregivers with accessibility needs. Seating can be a small change that makes an important difference in children’s enjoyment and learning!

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Cluster Seating Arrangement Example. (Copyright; author via source)