Exploring Creative Writing with Your Child*

*This is a collaborative post*

There are many benefits to exploring creative writing with your child, both academically and on a personal level. It will teach them a variety of key skills that they can carry through their childhood and well into adulthood. Of course, we already know that children tend to have very active imaginations, so why not encourage them to channel this in a fun yet educational manner? I have teamed up with a private boys’ school in Surrey to share some advice when it comes to exploring creative writing with your child. 

When encouraging your child to write a story of their own, ask them to think about the characters’ senses. What can they smell, hear, see, touch, or even taste? What do they look like? What are they wearing? Encourage them to use lots of adjectives to describe what they characters look like or how they feel. It might help by starting with a mind map so that your child can plan a certain direction for their story and make connections between different words and phrases. For instance, if they want to write a space adventure story, get them to include lots of verbs, nouns and adjectives related to space on their mind map. 

If starting a story from scratch is too big a challenge for your child, you could encourage them to re-write the ending of their favourite book instead. This should be easier because the characters and plot have already been formed. Another option is to get your child to pretend to be a journalist and write a book review, in which they explain what they liked and disliked about the story. 

Whatever creative writing project your child embarks on, make sure it’s based on a topic that they’re truly interested in, otherwise they’ll probably become bored and give up. If you do happen to see that they’re starting to get fed-up, mix it up and encourage them to bring their story to life with some role playing. Take it in turns to pretend to be a character from their story and ask one another questions. 

Not only are these activities lots of a fun and a chance for your child to flex their creative muscle, but creative writing activities will also help your child become better communicators, by expanding their vocabulary and ability to string a sentence together. 

 

*Photo source Pexels

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