Previous research in working with children has been used as a starting point for the purpose of researching speech development as well as factors that help the above. Among them is storytelling as an unavoidable part of a child's growing up and development. Storytelling encourages children to speak spontaneously during storytelling in play or conversation. The paper includes the theoretical part of language acquisition, speaking as a language activity with an emphasis on storytelling and its importance for the overall development of kindergarten and preschool children, and especially on the development of speech. The paper presents a research conducted on a sample of sixteen children of kindergarten and preschool age in the City of Zagreb using the method of comprehension test after the story is told. The aim of the research was to examine and determine whether storytelling can contribute to speech development in children of kindergarten and preschool age, and whether extracurricular activities and siblings have an impact on speech development. Storytelling has been found to encourage children to speak and use new words they have heard in stories. Also children who have siblings have significantly better answers than children who do not, and also children who go to multiple activities have better answers to the questions asked than children who go to one activity or do not go to any. It is also evident that gender does not play a big role because both boys and girls have equally good answers, depending on the question, where it was found that boys pay more attention when enumerating while girls less. In order for children to identify new words, better understand the content of the story and encourage speech, it is necessary to talk to them about the story told.