While playing video games can be a great source of fun for children, it is not the healthiest way of channeling their creativity. We need to introduce other creative and healthy ways to spark their ideas and imagination. For instance, how about a book?
Take their ideas, their stories, their experiences. Sum them all up and print them onto pages. It doesn’t have to be a 1000-page dissertation exploring the concepts of life. Of course not. In this article, you’ll learn how to channel your child’s ideas and transform them into their first little book masterpiece.
Assisting Your Child in Sticking to Their Thoughts/Ideas
Children possess extraordinary levels of creativity and imagination. Unfortunately, they can also have the attention span of a gnat. Getting them to sit down, concentrate, and perform a task can be a tall order, unless it is made interesting.
The Fundamentals
Do not complicate things; rather, state that there is a standard for every narrative. Explain the structure (beginning, middle, and the end). Encourage them by inquiring, “Who is your protagonist?” and “What do you do with him/her in the plot?”
When it comes to kids, asking these concrete/specific questions is often a better idea than going for vague questions like “What do you think?” or “What would you like to do?” This will make them consider more aspects and help them in developing a more complex structure of a narrative.
Creating Characters
This is one of the most exciting parts for everyone, but especially kids. Help your child think about who is the main hero in their story, and what do they want? Is the hero an anima, a superhero, maybe even a toy? Once your child chooses the character, encourage them to think about what is their character’s goal and what could possibly stop them from reaching it.
The character needs to have a goal and they also need some kind of a problem to solve to keep the story interesting.
Building a Plot
A basic plot has three parts – the beginning (exposition), the middle (body), and the end (conclusion). And you are the architect.
In the beginning, your child has to introduce the main character and the world they live in (the setting). In the body, which is the middle part, there is a disruption in the status quo of the character, for instance, presenting the character with a conflict (a challenge), or taking the character on a journey. This is the interesting section; perhaps the character becomes out of place, faces an antagonist, or acquires a companion. Or perhaps all of this combined in some exciting way.
Finally, the protagonist overcomes the conflict or goes through the adventure and everyone lives happily ever after.
THE END
Illustrations that Enhance the Narrative
It’s hard imagining someone that’s writing a children’s book without adding any illustrations. That’s the core/integral part. It’s a children’s book, after all. It’d be boring without AT LEAST SOME illustrations/drawings. The color and thrill would liven up the tale and also make the entire process of making the book a lot more enjoyable for your kid.
Drawing Simple Characters and Scenes
The first thing that probably came to your mind was – let the child pick some crayons and draw everything on their own. This is one of the simplest techniques of creating illustrations. Ask your child to sketch their main character and the most important scenes from the story, with a focus on the parts that they like the best. Remind them that they shouldn’t try too hard to make it perfect because the point is to capture the heart of the story.
Simple, playful drawings with lots of colors work just as well as ones that are detailed. Young kids usually can’t do advanced drawings and that’s perfectly okay, as long as the process is fun and they can express their imagination through the drawings.
Using Collage or Mixed Media
Not all kids like to draw, but you’ll have a hard time finding ones that don’t like color. If your child isn’t into drawing, collage and mixed media are fun alternatives. For instance, they could be able to tell a picture story by making use of other materials such
as colored papers, cutting images from magazines, or even using materials such as fabric.
With collage, they’ll get to experiment with both forms and patterns, while in mixed media they will be allowed cut, stick, glue, and assemble different materials to create a picture.
Organization
Once the illustrations are done, the only remaining step is to arrange them appropriately into the book. This is an exciting activity wherein your kid can place decorations on selected drawings and match them with appropriate parts of the story. They get to express themselves and try turning what they’ve imagined in their heads into something tangible, something real.
With illustrations that follow the text, the reader will have more fun with the book and understand the plot better.
Conclusion
A few simple, fun steps and you have a little masterpiece that you’ll be able to treasure forever. Kids grow up so fast and you’ll see that memories and mementos like this will be even more valuable to you in the future than they are now.
Have them work at their own pace and enjoy the time you spend together.
