Creative writing is a fun activity to explore with your youngsters, as it doesn’t have to be taken too seriously. The best thing about it, though, is that it can benefit your child academically. Children usually have great imaginations and it would be wise for parents to help to develop that skill. Read on for a few ideas from a prep school in the Cotswolds.
It’s a good idea to read to/with your child as much as you can and start as early as possible. Regular reading will be great for their spelling and grammar skills, and for expanding their vocabulary. It will also introduce them to various genres and different writing styles. They will start to develop opinions of the books you read together and begin to understand which genres they prefer. Once you finish a book, you should always have discussions about the events of the story and how the characters might have changed over the course of the book. You should also explore how a simple change in one character’s actions might have altered the whole book and lead to a different ending.
When practising creative writing, make sure your child chooses a topic that actually interests them, otherwise they will find the task boring and uninspiring. Once a topic has been chosen, you should encourage your youngster to put a plan together or perhaps create a mind map of different words that could be associated with the theme. For instance, a space adventure might relate to words like stars, aliens, astronauts.
If your child is having trouble getting started with their story, even after mind mapping, you could suggest an opening sentence or create a problem that their character has to solve. The latter idea will help your child establish a beginning, middle and end. To give you some inspiration, take a look at the blurbs or first lines of some of the books you already own and just alter them slightly before suggesting them to your child.