Who doesn’t love stories to listen, right? Kids simply love to listen to stories, especially at bedtime. Bedtime stories for children are always interesting and fun to listen to.
With stories, the possibilities are truly limitless for kids as your child can join Tintin as he travels the world, solves mysteries and nabs crooks. Your child can study at Hogwarts and learn about life through the magical world of Harry Potter, your child can go back in time and become an active participant at Akbar’s court.
Reading stories together helps to develop a bond between the parent and child, and prepare children to sleep. A child’s creative skills are developed by reading stories. In this article, we will focus on some of the best bed time stories for children.
Why Bedtime Stories Are Important?
If you are wondering why bedtime stories for kids are important, we have sorted through some of the best reasons:
- Reading bedtime stories for children, creates special memories as well as the children pay attention to the story.
- By reading stories during bedtime, both parents and the children spend quality time together.
- Apart from the many events, the kids and parents attend much quality time such as work, school, chores, errands, extracurricular activities, homework, and cooking as there must be some sort of daily routine in their lives. It makes reading bedtime stories a part of your daily routine.
- As a parent, you can engage in open discussions with your child, about the characters that are part of the story. Also, talk about the places in which the stories are illustrated and how the characters interact with one another. The problem and the resolution of the story and also the important moral values that you can teach your child.
- Make a point to hear whatever views your child gives and let them hear what you want to say. By this way, you can enjoy a simple conversation, by getting to know about your child.
- Children, who are exposed to reading many books tend to learn many words, and sounds, and that develops a better comprehension and language skills in them.
- They will learn how to pronounce correctly and increase their vocabulary, and can see and hear important words.
- Exposure to bedtime stories helps children to develop logical skills.
- Bedtime stories for children help them to learn how to anticipate the events that happen in a story and how to use those events in a particular sequence, from the stories they hear.
- Through imaginative and entertaining characters, children will learn how to interpret real life situations.
- Reading stories help children increase their confidence levels and improves how effectively they communicate.
- Few bedtime stories contain morals and values (R) which reflect how people should treat themselves, how they should treat others, and what is truly important in life.
[Also, Read: Stories for Kids with Morals]
Short Bedtimes Stories For Kids:
The bedtime stories (R) can help the kids to develop their memory and creative thinking. Here are some examples of popular bedtime kids’ stories-
1. The Tortoise and the Hare by Aesop Fables
This is one of the classic bedtime stories for the kids.
The Tortoise and the hare.
They both have an argument about who is faster and decide to race. Since the hare was in front of the tortoise by long shot, the hare decided to rest under the tree. Low and behold, the tortoise slowly, but surely, finishes and wins the race. Thus, teaching children to be humble and to excel at what they’re best at.
2. Lottie and the Fabulous Whale:
The story is all about Lottie and her dog Max who were in their beach hut. As they sat, Lottie’s mind wandered and she looked out to sea. There, in the distance, she saw the large bulky whale. All of a sudden, it blew a fountain from its blow hole. To her delight, she quickly realized it was not water it was glitter!
It was the most fabulous whale in the world. Lottie ran down to the beach as fast as her Gucci flip flops would carry her! She called to the whale, called him by name because she knew who he was. It is a funny bedtime story for kids.
3. The Monkey And The Wedge:
In this bedtime story for babies, a group of monkey arrives at the site of the building and watches the workers leaving for their mid-day meals. One of the carpenters was sawing a huge log of wood. Since, it was only half-done; he placed a wedge in between to prevent the log from closing up. He then went off along with the other workers for his meal.
When all the workers were gone, the monkeys came down from the trees and started jumping around the site, and playing with the equipments. There was one monkey, who got curious about the wedge placed between the log. He sat down on the log, and having placed himself in between the half-split log, caught hold of the wedge and started pulling at it. All of a sudden, the wedge came out. As a result, the half-split log closed in and the monkey got caught in the gap of the log.
4. A City Rat And A Village Rat:
This story draws a parallel line between the peaceful nature of living in villages versus the stressful nature of city life, with rats as the central characters. By observing the portrayals of two different lifestyles, the kids start to have an understanding about the real world.
The city rat wished to meet his village friend so he sent the message through some rats of the village. The village friend was very excited about his friend coming to visit.
The village friend made all the preparations and arrangement to welcome and meet him. To receive his friend, he went wearing a traditional dress like dhoti, kurta and cap, with a garland in his hand. However, his city friend was wearing a suit, boots and a neck tie. They hugged each other and exchanged greeting.
5. Princess And The Pea:
This fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen focuses on a prince who is in search of a princess and the ways in which he can finally meet her. In search of a princess, he travels to far away kingdoms but does not find the real princess of his dreams. So, he comes back to his kingdom, disheartened and sad. A few days later, on a dark stormy night, a princess knocks the doors of the palace. She is in a disheveled state, with her dress, boots and hair all drenched and dirty.
It is the mother of the prince who tested her whether she is a real princess or not, so puts a pea on the bed and lays 20 soft mattresses and 20 feather pillows on top of it. The princess sleeps on it that night.
Read the story to find out the other part of the story.
6. The Lion King:
This is one of the best bed time stories for children. The lion king story is from the Disney studios. It is a story about a loving lion cub named Simba, who is separated from his parents and his pride as a baby. Simba is the young cub of Lion King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi. Mufasa’s jealous brother Scar wants the kingdom and plans to kill the king and the prince.
One fine day, Simba runs into his childhood sweetheart Nala, who tells him about the sad state of his kingdom. After persuasion by the wise baboon Rafiki, Simba goes back to fight his uncle and get his kingdom back.
7. The Ugly Duckling:
This is one of the funniest bedtime stories for kids but with a good and strong moral value. The story is about a farm where a duck sits on a clutch of eggs to make them hatch. The eggs hatch one by one, and soon, there were six yellow-feathered ducklings chirping excitedly. The last egg takes longer to hatch and from it emerges a strange looking duckling with grey feathers. Everybody finds the grey duckling ugly, including its own mother.
Read the story about how the ugly duckling struggles her way to find a way with others.
8. The Ant And The Grasshopper:
This story talks about the importance of hard work and planning for the future. It’s about a grasshopper that spends the summer singing and idling away his time. Meanwhile, his neighbors, a colony of ants work hard throughout the summer to store food for the winter.
The grasshopper laughs at the ants and tells them that they should enjoy the summer. The ants tell the grasshopper that he should store food for the winter or he will starve when everything is frozen. During the winter, the ants are in their nest resting and surviving on the food that they stored for such a long way. The grasshopper comes to their door, hungry and cold. He begs the ants for food and says he realized the error of his ways.
9. A Color Of His Own By Leo Lionni:
The story is about a chameleon that has a problem accepting his gift of changing colors until he finds another chameleon just like him. In this story, a chameleon was sitting on the tiger’s back when he thought of getting his own color. So, he jumped onto the greenest leaf on a tree and sat on it. He was happy to be green. But soon it was autumn, and the leaf turned brown, and the chameleon turned brown. Later, it turned red, and the chameleon did too. It is all about the change of life as per the situation. This a story of real life lesson to the kids.
10. Cinderella:
Kids simply love listening to the story of Cinderella during bedtime. The story is about a beautiful girl named Cinderella who lived with her wicked stepmother and two stepsisters. The stepmother made her do all the housework and was very cruel to her. One fine day, Cinderella comes across her fairy godmother in a burst of light, and she used her magic to transform Cinderella into a princess with a lovely dress and glass slippers so that she can go for ball.
The fairy godmother warned her that the magic will wear off at midnight and that Cinderella should return home before that. When Cinderella arrived at the ball, the prince saw her, and they fell in love.
Read the story to find the rest part of the story.
Hope this article has given a good amount of options of short bedtime stories for kids. Go through each story in details with your kids and spend a good quality time with your kids during bedtime.
