Exploring Creative Writing with Your Child

*Collaborative post

There are lots of benefits to creative writing for children. Not only is it fun, it will also help improve them handwriting, broaden their vocabulary and expand their imagination. Parents can help to encourage creative writing activities at home with the following advice from a co-educational independent school in Surrey.

Encourage reading

The more your child reads, the better they will be at writing. This is because regular reading will teach them different about different sentence structures, spelling and grammar, and the main features of a particular genre. Encourage them to read a range of different types of literature, both fiction and non-fiction, until they find something they truly enjoy and ask them lots of questions about it, like what they enjoyed or didn’t enjoy. If you find that reading with your child isn’t helping to improve their spelling by much, you may wish to consider enrolling them in a spelling program.

Write a review

Once your child finishes a book, set them a project to write a review, using various adjectives to describe the good and bad aspects of the story. Ask them how the book made them feel; did they get scared or emotional whilst reading? Did they have a favourite character? Get them to rate the book out of 5 and say whether or not they would recommend it to other people.

Re-write the ending

Another option is to encourage your youngster to re-write the ending of the story. Explore how some minor changes in events can lead to a completely different outcome. This is easier than starting a story from scratch, because the characters and tone of voice have already been established.

Use Mind-Maps

Once your child has established a particular genre that they’d like to write about, they should use a mind-map to jot down all the words and phrases that related to this topic. If they get stuck, encourage them to think about how the particular topic affects the senses; what might they be able to see, hear or feel?

If your child seems to be struggling to explore creative writing, don’t hesitate to contact their school for some additional tips and advice. You should also try and be involved to help them and cheer them on so that they don’t get frustrated and give up.