Sharing stories, reading books and enjoying storytelling is a wonderful way of spending time with children as well as developing essential skills not least speaking and listening.

At AVUK we love stories and books and we are celebrating National Storytelling Week with some wonderful stories.

Take some time to enjoy some of our team, as well as some of our wonderful families, share their own favourites in English as well as fabulous tales in other languages.

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To kick it off we wanted to share some top tips on how to use books to help develop speech and language skills. 

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Parent Ambassador Tanya Saunders has created her own books to support auditory verbal techniques to help children learn to listen and speak. Her seven -year-old twin daughters Onna and Sala are reading one of her books here. Onna received her cochlear implants four years ago. Her sister has been a huge support in her Onna's speech and language journey. Enjoy the twins reading Ling Ling Bird together.

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Mariavittoria is an Auditory Verbal Therapist and here she reads one her favourite bedtime stories in Italian.

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AVUK Auditory Verbal therapist Susie shares two wonderful bedtime stories for us with daughter Poppy - including great dinosaur sound effects. ROARRRR!

And poor Mr Bear who just can't find some peace and quiet.

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Priscila, AVUK's Clinical Assistant reads the story Jacaré, não! by Antonio Prata.

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Benjamin was diagnosed with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss at 4 weeks old, receiving his first pair of hearing aids at 6 weeks old. Now aged 6, he reads his story about Beale Street in America. Read Benjamin's story here.

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Rafi has just graduated from AVUK and started school in September last year. Wonderful speaking and reading Rafi. What a chatterbox Bill is.

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Sade Oram is a 21-year-old AVUK graduate who's hearing loss was diagnosed at two-and-a-half when she started the AVUK programme. Here she reads one of her own childhood books