Creative writing activities are fantastic for a child’s learning and a great way to keep them occupied at home without relying on a screen. Creative writing can help increase your child’s vocabulary, which can support their communication skills, while also enhancing their spelling and grammar skills and boosting their imagination. These are just a few reasons why you should try and encourage your child to partake in creative writing activities at home. Read on for some advice from a pre-school in Lincoln on where to start.
Give Your Child Some Writing Prompts
Creative writing isn’t as easy as giving your child a pen and paper and telling them to write something. You’ll probably need to give them some writing prompts so that they know where to start. Here are some suggestions:
- Write a story about what you would do on your dream holiday
- Pretend you are [insert favourite celebrity here] and write a diary entry for the day
- Describe your dream home, how many rooms would it have?
- If you woke up in the body of your favourite animal, how would you spend the day?
- Pretend you’re an alien on another planet. What’s it like there?
- If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?
- Write a diary entry where everything is the opposite of how you actually felt
Re-write the Ending of an Existing Book
If your child is a keen reader, you could encourage them to re-write the ending of their favourite book. This shouldn’t be overly challenging, because the characters and plot have already been created, so it’s just a case of altering a few of the events.
Write a Book Review
Again, this will only work if your child likes to read. Ask them to pretend to be a journalist and write a review of a book they have recently read. Before they start, encourage them to write a list of adjectives that they would use to describe the book, so that they can incorporate these words into their review. Would they recommend the book to other people? What would they rate it out of ten? Which character was the best and why? Did the ending come as a surprise?
Practise Mind-Mapping
Before your child starts writing any creative piece, it’s always good to have a plan in place. A mind-map is a good idea because it will encourage them to think about different nouns, verbs, and adjectives depending on the genre. For instance, if they want to write a story about space, they can write down words like stars, galaxy, planets, astronauts etc.
If you’re struggling for inspiration, don’t hesitate to chat with your child’s teachers about your idea to get them to explore creative writing. They might be able to give you a few ideas of their own.
