A child’s language and literacy development is a big deal—for all of us! So why do we start with something as small as a 100-word story? As Aesop said: “Good things come in Little Story packages.” Okay, so maybe he said something more like small packages, but we do believe Aesop would love what our Little Stories can do. After all, he believed in the power of a very short story. And so do we.
Why 100 words? For one thing, it keeps a story simple and manageable. A child quickly reaches “the end” and feels a sense of accomplishment right away. But it’s more than that. When we kept a story small, we realized that structures stood out and speech practice focused. Little felt so very big!
So, we created 82 engaging stories and combined them with incredible illustrations—that’s what your young user will notice. But, you will notice that we are so much more than a good read. Each story is a package—a package bursting with supporting curriculum. We promise to teach you how to teach with story as you push those buttons and swipe away!
Yes. You will see how a carefully crafted story is loaded with potentials for learning. But when you are sitting side by side with your young user, you will feel how a small story can be both wonder-filled and fun.
Here is the package that will impress any student:
• A variety of entertaining characters in all kinds of story situations.
• Beautiful, full-color illustrations.
• Personable audio recordings that allow a child to explore the stories independently.
• Wonderful story-talk activities that help turn the reading experience into a mini book club.
• Fun activities such as tongue twisters and coloring pages.
Here is the package that is filled to the brim for you:
• Sound-saturated stories to tune a child’s ears to phonemes.
• Reading fluency tools that track, graph, and show reading progress.
• A practical assessment feature that allows you to mark a child’s reading, vocabulary, and speech errors and convert them into flash cards for practice.
• The capability to highlight specific word groups (sight words, phonemic target words, and challenge words) in the story text or to pull them into flash cards.
• WH Questions and Let’s Talk activities that cultivate comprehension and conversation.
• Sequencing practice that subtly guides a child in narrative structuring.
• A retelling activity that is reinforced by a straightforward narrative model—a tool that can help a child understand story structure better than many adults.
• Story data including verb tense and point of view to help guide language practice.
• Story sorting to help you locate stories by title, theme, reading level, and sound.
• An emphasis on the R, L, S, and Th sounds (the most difficult sounds to master in speech).
• Scoring and reporting features to monitor and share user progress.
• And more…
Children have taught us that potential matters so much more than size. In fact, small has its very own kind of power. That has been our mindset throughout the development of our Little Stories—the power of children and the power of small stories. That mindset has made all the difference.
For professional teachers and speech-language pathologists:
Our curriculum specifically supports reading fluency and comprehension as well as receptive and expressive language objectives.
READING AND LITERACY
• Reading fluency
• Reading comprehension
• Story structure awareness
• Story tradition and genre exploration
RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE SKILLS
• Attention and listening
• Vocabulary acquisition
• Story structure and comprehension
• Question processing
EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE SKILLS
• Speech production
• Phonemic awareness
• Story sequencing
• Story retelling
• Question answering
We are confident you will enjoy sharing our Little Stories. More important, you will love watching your young learner make big leaps in language and literacy development!