--- description: Meal-time conversation can be a vocabulary booster for young children title: Dinnertime Storytelling Can Help Make Kids Better Readers image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03edef980773b568/69886443f887dc2b67e926d2/family-outdoor-dinner.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) ## Ideas Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Family](/tag/family/) ## Family Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Dinnertime Storytelling Can Help Make Kids Better Readers by [Anne Fishel, Harvard Medical School / The Conversation](/author/anne-fishel/) ## Anne Fishel, Harvard Medical School / The Conversation Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Sep 22, 2015 3:04 PM CUT  Getty Images by [Anne Fishel, Harvard Medical School / The Conversation](/author/anne-fishel/) ## Anne Fishel, Harvard Medical School / The Conversation Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Sep 22, 2015 3:04 PM CUT As a young child, I loved to imagine myself as a pioneer girl in [_Little House in the Big Woods_](http://www.harpercollins.com/9780060264307/little-house-in-the-big-woods "undefined"), eating fresh snow drizzled with maple syrup. I even pestered my mother to make this treat with the dirty snow that fell on our Manhattan sidewalk. Not a chance. Years later, I honored my young sons’ request to try a coconut after reading the adventures of [_Babar_](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/20204/the-story-of-babar-by-jean-de-brunhoff/ "undefined"). Who knew that even a hammer and chisel won’t crack these nuts? I resorted to clearing out the sidewalk below and then pitching the fruit out a third-floor window. It worked, but thankfully there are many easier ways to bring food and reading together than hurling coconuts or eating dirty snow. Here are some of the connections I researched while working on my book, [_Home for Dinner_](http://www.amacombooks.org/HomeForDinner.htm "undefined"). And remember, none of these requires a gourmet meal or a trip to the bookstore. Library books and a takeout pizza are just as good. **Use dinner conversation to build vocabulary** For starters, there is the linguistic pairing of reading and eating, shown in such common expressions as “devouring a good book” or being a “voracious” reader. Those sayings reflect the reality that children who have [regular family dinners](https://theconversation.com/science-says-eat-with-your-kids-34573 "undefined") have a real leg up on being good and early readers. Years of research from the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development have shown that [dinner conversation is a terrific vocabulary booster](http://doi.org/10.1002/cd.155 "undefined") for young children – even better than [reading aloud](http://doi.org/10.1097/MOP.0b013e32833a4673 "undefined") to them. Rare words, those that go beyond the 3,000 most common ones, are 10 times more likely to show up in dinner conversation than in storybooks. When parents tell a story at the dinner table about their day or recount a funny family anecdote, they usually include many words that a young child hasn’t yet learned but can understand from the context of the story. [Children who have rich vocabularies](http://www-tc.pbs.org/teacherline/courses/rdla170/docs/fostering%5Flanguage.pdf "undefined"), packed with less common, more sophisticated words, learn to read more easily because they can make sense of the words they are deciphering. **Encourage children to tell stories** The benefits to children don’t just come from _listening_ to stories. Children who know how to _tell_ stories are also better readers. In one large study, kindergartners who were [able to tell stories](http://products.brookespublishing.com/Beginning-Literacy-with-Language-P20.aspx "undefined") grew up to be fourth- and even seventh-graders with higher reading comprehension than those kindergartners who lacked narrative skills. Dinner is a prime time for children to tell stories and to be encouraged to tell better stories. Researchers have found that [children can be taught](http://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000998003651 "undefined") to tell longer, more information-packed stories with a few simple instructions. * Reminisce with your children about past experiences you’ve shared with them. “Remember when we forgot to take the brownies out of the oven?” * Ask a lot of open-ended questions, including plenty of “how” and “why” questions rather than questions with yes-or-no answers. * Encourage longer stories by repeating what your child says or by elaborating on her story. * Instead of deciding what story to tell, follow your child’s lead on what she wants to talk about. In this study, children who were given these instructions had bigger vocabularies and told more complex stories a year later. **Make a literary meal** There are other tasty connections between food and books. Consider the banquet of children’s books that feature food as a central force in the action. There are the magical noodles in [_Strega Nona_](http://books.simonandschuster.com/Strega-Nona/Tomie-dePaola/9780671662837 "undefined"), the pomegranate seeds that bind Persephone to Hades, the irresistible Turkish delight in [_The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_](http://www.harpercollins.com/9780064471046/the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe "undefined") and the whimsical tribute to picky eaters, [_Green Eggs and Ham_](http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/43017/green-eggs-and-ham-by-dr-seuss/ "undefined"). Just as dinner conversation can lead to more reading, reading can be the prompt for meals and for conversation. Parents and children might recreate a favorite literary meal for dinner, and then read that book, or a portion of it, aloud. Split pea soup from [_George and Martha_](http://www.hmhco.com/shop/books/George-and-Martha/9780395199725 "undefined") or spaghetti and meatballs from [_Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs_](https://catalog.simonandschuster.com/TitleDetails/TitleDetails.aspx?cid=1376&isbn=9780689306471 "undefined") are two possibilities. And, don’t forget the many nursery rhymes that involve porridge, rice pudding and blackbird pie (to name just a few). It could be fun to imagine what [Harry Potter](http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/harry-potter-and-the-philosophers-stone-9781582348261/ "undefined") might eat for dinner at Hogwarts or to create a high tea that [_Mary Poppins_](http://www.hmhco.com/shop/books/Mary-Poppins-80th-Anniversary-Collection/9780544340473 "undefined") might like. Of course it’s not just children’s literature that gets our mouths watering. Melville devotes a chapter to clam chowder in [_Moby Dick_](http://www.penguin.com/book/moby-dick-by-herman-melville/9780142437247 "undefined"), and in Nora Ephron’s [_Heartburn_](http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/46734/heartburn/ "undefined"), the philandering husband gets his comeuppance with a Key lime pie in the face. If cooking a literary meal doesn’t get you in a reading mood, here’s another idea for a dinner: ask family members to talk about one book that changed their life. That dinner conversation might just jumpstart some bedtime reading. _This_ [_article_](https://theconversation.com/dinnertime-storytelling-makes-kids-voracious-readers-47318 "undefined") _originally appeared on_ [_The Conversation_](http://theconversation.com "undefined") ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4040662/dinnertime-storytelling/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4040662/dinnertime-storytelling/"},"headline":"Dinnertime Storytelling Can Help Make Kids Better Readers","datePublished":"2015-09-22T15:04:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-07-09T08:19:52.140Z","description":"Meal-time conversation can be a vocabulary booster for young children","url":"https://time.com/4040662/dinnertime-storytelling/","keywords":["Family","Education","Dinner","reading","learning"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03edef980773b568/69886443f887dc2b67e926d2/family-outdoor-dinner.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Anne Fishel, Harvard Medical School / The Conversation"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt03edef980773b568/69886443f887dc2b67e926d2/family-outdoor-dinner.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"family-outdoor-dinner","caption":"family-outdoor-dinner","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/family/","name":"Family"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4040662/dinnertime-storytelling/","name":"Dinnertime Storytelling Can Help Make Kids Better Readers"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success","description":"The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/HSYDj99Q/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-02-17T21:10:40.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/HSYDj99Q.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4040662/dinnertime-storytelling/","duration":"PT17M44S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4040662/dinnertime-storytelling/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```