* Read to or with your child and when they are ready - encourage them to read to you, an older sibling, grand-parent or relative. Encourage them to read widely - stories, plays, poems, comic strips. This will expose them to different writing styles and genres, new words plus help improve their grammar useage.
* Provide them a quiet place, writing and drawing materials to work with. Encourage more productivity, as this will help enhance their skills and make them very good at what they do, by putting work on the fridge, framing them and displaying on the wall or living room cabinet. Post it here on our blog where family and friends can view it. Even better, publish it on our magazine and share the digital copy with family and friends.
* Encourage them to practice daily for at least a minimum of 20 minutes. Let them choose when they're ready to work for more than 20 minutes - this helps foster their creative enthusiasm. Help them by providing them with prompts e.g Words they can write around, pictures (e.g of children playing in the park or family eating dinner) they can use as a creative prompt to start a story, write about their day or even extend the story-line of one of their favourite TV programme.
* Encourage them to always think and note down points about their project (story, poem, comic strip) before creating them. Some questions they can ask themselves are: "who (are my characters), what (is the story about/problems characters are having/the main event of the story), where (is the story taking place), when (did the story happen), why (are the characters having this problem), and how (will they resolve this problem)"
* Review your child's work. Be kind, praise them for their effort pointing out all the things they did well. Discuss the story with your child - let them share their ideas, the different characters, why the character is doing what they're doing, the sketches etc. Point out two or three main areas of improvement. Be sensitive to their feeling, do not be too critical neither should you point out all the hundred things they did wrong - stick with two or three areas of improvement and gently suggesting how they could improve it. Do not impose your own ideas on them.
* Play word games with them as this will help them build their vocabulary, e.g:
Scattergories is a creative-thinking game produced by Hasbro for 12 yr olds and up. There is both a card and a board game. Click here for a demo on how to play the game.
Pictionary is a fun vocabulary building, creative thinking, problem solving game which also helps improve time management skills as players have a limited amount of time to help their team mates guess the correct word by drawing or sketching clues to the word they see on the card.
Mad Libs is a template word game where one player prompts another for a list of words (adjectives, verbs, and nouns) to substitute or fill in blanks in a story, before reading the – often comical or nonsensical – story created aloud. Click here for a fun free online and printable version. You can also download Madlibs app.
Taboo by Hasbro is a fun game that not only increases vocabulary but also encourages creative thinking and problem solving skills. The aim of the game is to give your team carefully worded clues without using the obvious clues (which are strictly taboo or you'll get the buzzer and lose the point) to enable them guess words fast.
Magnetic Poetry Kids Kit by Dave Kapell is a fun vocabulary building game for kids 5 and up. It also encourages creative thinking process as they think of poem or story ideas, improves grammar and problem solving skills as they think of words to use next, encourages creativity and self expression. The kid kit contains up to 320 magnetic word tiles that range in difficulty from very easy to challenging which kids can use to make up as many original poems a they please.
Cranium is a great and fun board game for teens and adults. It has a variety of activities that utilises the whole brain. Work your way around the board completing exciting tasks. Roll the dice and land on a colour corresponding to a card; create the item on the card from Cranium clay or sketch a picture for your team to guess, answer a fact question or crack the puzzle.
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