As a parent it’s natural that you’ll want to encourage your child in their educational and creative pursuits. Creative writing not only helps your child understand more about story structure and plot, it also helps them understand the importance of grammar and English language as a whole.
So if you’re looking to encourage your child to write creatively, here are some ideas to try.
Give them story prompts
Story prompts are a great way to encourage children to write creatively. Anything can spark their imagination and story prompts are a good way to kick start the process. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Cut out characters and objects from magazines
- Collect travel location images
- Take photographs of interesting book and album covers
- Photographs (old ones are great for this!)
- Have a collection of random words and have your child pick 3 or 4 to use
- Give them an opening sentence or an open ended sentence, to get their story started
- Select a random paragraph from a newspaper or magazine
You can download a list of Story Prompts here !
Enrich their vocabulary
Help you children see how much fun they can have with words. Use word play to enrich their vocabulary and help them be more creative with their written content. Board games (such as Scrabble, Articulate and Boggle) and educational apps (Wordscapes, Word Connect, and Words With Friends) are great for this. If you want to go old school, why not simply opt for picking a word of the day from the dictionary – and seeing how many times you can use that word during the course of your day?
Encourage reading
If you want to encourage children to write creatively, encourage regular reading. It will always help a child strengthen their writing skills, especially if you encourage them to talk about the books they’ve read. Take a look at our blog entitled ‘How to read with your child’, as it will give you some ideas for questions to ask to help your child think more deeply about what they’re reading.
It’s also a good idea to encourage your child to read a wide variety of different styles and genres of books. If you’re looking for reading ideas, here’s our list of classic books for 9-11 year olds.
Enrol your child on the Story Writing Course!
This Story Writing Course for children In Years 4-6 will give your child a solid foundation in the writing skills required at Key Stage Two and for 11+ exams. It is perfect for both budding authors and reluctant writers alike.
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