When coming up with December holiday activities for your children to keep your preschooler entertained, you’re bound to start wondering how you can blend learning with having fun.
Activities that encourage your child’s creativity and imagination don’t only keep the little ones entertained, but it can build on essential skills such as literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking that your child will need to succeed in the classroom.
That’s where creative writing activities come into play!
There are many benefits of creative writing for preschoolers, including strengthening their creativity, building their self-confidence, and teaching problem-solving skills.
If you’re hoping to weave creative writing into your December holiday activities, here are 4 age-appropriate ideas to get you started:
Creative Writing Activities for Preschoolers
1. Creative writing classes
Enrolling your child in creative writing classes is the most straightforward way to expose them to a regular and structured environment for creative writing. If your child is already expressing a keen interest in creative writing, being in a class environment with other like-minded students can be the push they need to hone their craft and improve their skills. Creative writing classes can also be a great way to expose them to different genres and types of writing such as creative nonfiction, biographies, poetry, or scripts.
2. Themed A-Z lists
Nurturing your child’s creative writing streak doesn’t always mean jumping straight to complicated longform pieces like essays or poetry. For younger children, simpler activities (when done the right way!) can be the spark that fires up their imagination and encourages them pursue creative writing in the future.
Involving your child’s passion or hobby in creative writing activities is a great way to sustain their interest. Create themed A-Z lists related to that activity, and increase the level of creativity over time. For example if they love dinosaurs, work on an A-Z list of dinosaurs from around the world; then move onto describing what they think those dinosaurs looked or sounded like.
3. Mixed medium painting and art
If your child has a creative streak and you want to encourage their creative writing in particular, make use of other forms of art to get them on board! Begin a list of creative prompts for painting or drawing, and encourage your child to come up with their own prompts or ideas too. Turn it into a fun game by swapping out specific elements like colours, shapes, or sizes and let your child’s imagination run wild.
4. Writing letters to family and friends
The year-end period is the perfect time to update your family, friends, and loved ones on the important milestones your family has experienced throughout the year. Get your children involved in this by encouraging them to write the letters you’ll be sending out!
These can take a hardcopy or digital format, and you can vary the levels of creative writing involved. For example, you can encourage them to write about a family holiday through their point of view, or have them describe what they hope to experience in the new year.
Nurture your Child’s Creative Streak with MindChamps
Language and literacy skills are foundational in encouraging a love for creative writing in your child, as well as in promoting lifelong learning that will last long beyond their preschool years.
That’s why MindChamps Reading & Writing™ (Natural Literacy™) is a core module included throughout our preschool curriculum programmes in Singapore. Developed by our team of early literacy experts, it uses fun and engaging interactive activities to encourage early literacy and holistic development in Preschoolers up to Nursery 2.
Our MindChamps Reading with Phonics classes can also help build on your child’s budding literacy, critical thinking, and reading skills. Our programme doesn’t just look at how to read words and sentences on a page, but ensures that your child can achieve reading with understanding – laying the foundation for achieving a Champion Mindset and academic success in the years to come.
Get in touch to find out more about our programmes, or arrange for a visit to any MindChamps PreSchool near you today. Discover more literacy tips for preschoolers in our blog, including 5 ways to build early literacy skills (that aren’t storytelling!) and how sight words encourage early literacy.