Exploring Creative Writing with Your Child

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Creative writing activities provide children with many learning opportunities that allow them to develop various skills that they can transfer to different areas of life. For instance, it will encourage them to practise their spelling, grammar, and vocabulary skills, making them better communicators. What’s more, it’s a chance for them to think outside the box and explore their imagination. Here are some creative writing activities you could try with your child, suggested by an independent school in Kingston upon Thames.

Re-Write a Scene from a Book

Starting an entire story from scratch is potentially a bit too challenging for a child, so start with the simpler task of re-writing a scene from an existing book. They could write it from a different character’s point of view or change the scene altogether to take the story into a different direction.

Write a Shopping List for a Famous Historical Character

Ask your child to imagine they are the assistant of Florence Nightingale or Albert Einstein. What sort of things might they need to buy?

Pretend to Be in a Foreign Country

Encourage your child to pretend they are sitting on a beach in Barbados, or sight-seeing in San Francisco. What sort of things can they see or hear? How do they feel?

Write a Diary Entry from the Future

Get your child to pretend they are much older than they are now, writing a diary entry. This will encourage them to think about their future goals. Perhaps the diary entry will explore their day at work or a travel experience. Maybe they hope to be a parent themselves, so they could write about what it’s like to have a child. The diary entry might not be about them at all, it might be about what life in general is like in the future – perhaps there are aliens roaming the streets or people flying to and from place rather than walking.

Pretend to Be an Inanimate Object

Ask your child to look around the room and choose an object. Then, ask them to write a short paragraph from the point of view of that object. For example, how does the lamp feel, couped up in the house all day? What does the teddy bear do when all the humans go out to work/school?

Imagine You’re Interviewing a Celebrity

Encourage your child to pretend to be a radio presenter or chat-show host, interviewing their favourite celebrity. Ask them to write the script for this conversation.

Conclusion

Children consume information like sponges. Parents and educators need to make the most of this timeframe because this is when teaching them new skills would be most effective.

Teaching children to write improves their reading skills. It allows them to recognize the connection between the letters they see and the sounds the letters make. As they master their words and sentences, creative writing will boost their ability to think outside the box and look for alternatives.

Since this practice expands their way of thinking, it will also lend itself to other areas of learning, especially where there is problem-solving and analysis.

Creative writing should be a fun experience for kids, so the adults in their lives would do well to create an environment conducive to this activity and invest in custom writing tools like pens and markers so they’ll look forward to writing.