How to Teach A Child to Enjoy Creative Writing

The biggest deterrent to creative writing is frequently encountering difficulty with spelling and grammar. The creativity is impacted if the writer must constantly look up words and check grammatical errors. Creative writing should be a great joy for a child, allowing them to create new stories and outlets for their emotions. You can open the floodgate by teaching creative writing with verbal stories first. Read on to learn how to teach a child to enjoy creative writing.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Insist that the child begins with verbal stories. Start a story for the child. You can make it anything, but the more ridiculous the better. Tell a story about a mouse that lived in the freezer section of the grocery store. Use a “mouse voice” to express the words of the mouse.

2. Enjoy the laughter as your child listens to the story. See if they can tell one or expand on your story. You can help him with ideas that he can use for his story. Enjoy the exchange of ideas. Explain that stories are a great deal of fun to create.

3. Expand the ideas to be written down on paper. You may want to transcribe one of the child’s at first to encourage her. When you teach creative writing develop the concept of saving the story for reading aloud later.

4. Encourage the child to write a story himself. You can help them by giving them a starter to the story. Give some time and then ask your child to read the story aloud to you. Do not look at the paper. You are not going to do any corrections for grammar when you are beginning to teach creative writing.

5. Wait until you notice the child is looking forward to writing. Do not correct the paper during creative writing time but use it as an English lesson later on. Explain that you could use sentences from a book, but it would be more fun to use his masterpiece and put it in a book.

6. Never judge the creativity. Interesting tales can be developed if allowed to develop in a nurturing environment. Always allow the child to read the story aloud rather than hand it to you. It gives the child an opportunity to be center stage and allows you to ask questions that will encourage more description.

Tips & Warnings

• If you ask questions try to make them things that you might be curious about. “What color was the mouse? Did the mouse wear clothes? What did he look like? How did he stay warm?” Ask the questions in an interested non-threatening manner. Track the use of descriptors and see if it helps. You may want to make a few suggestions to include descriptive answers in the story.

[julz49221]

on 2/13/2008 I really like this one, I have been trying to get my daughters to write more especially on the computer.

[bizewriter]

on 2/12/2008 Great article!