Kids Create Great Stories!

To me, the most magical part of being a child is stories. Before the grownups have bashed the magic out of us, before we quit believing in that special place reserved for children, where faeries and ogres, dragons and knights, cowboys and painted ladies run wild. In that magical time, we can be anything.

One thing writers get away with is to toss aside the grownup attitudes–we stayed in the land of magic. So we understand that we’re not teaching a child how to write a story, what we’re really doing is channeling all that energy so it actually does get written down or recorded in some fashion. The kids have vast imaginations, always have. Grownups are the ones deficient.

Stories can be told in many ways. When my granddaughter, Baby Mo, visited me last summer, I thought it would be a great idea if she wrote a story and we made a book. I can do graphics–mediocre, but I can get them done. I have a duplexing printer that prints booklet style. We’re set.

Except Baby Mo had other ideas. She folded her arms and said, “I want to be on YouTube.”

I must admit to being a bit alarmed.

Turned out, I was the mere slave because I knew graphics and moviemaker. Baby Mo designed the structure, planned and posed for the pictures, took many of them herself, wrote all the captions, and picked the music. Wanna see?

That only covered half of the vacation, so she made Part 2. We used this same structure for her sister’s two videos and her mother’s video.

Kids are incredibly creative. I love working with them before they come to believe they can’t draw, or sing, or dance, or make up stories. It seems that by about nine years old, they lose the magic and are on their way to adulthood, however boring that may be.

If you’d like to channel your child’s creativity, here’s a lesson I prepared for Baby Mo’s class called You Can Make a Story! (There are other classes and worksheets posted on the Class page of my website.) Whether your child is better at talking, acting, writing, or singing, this lesson can get you started.

And by the way, the structure is the same for grownup stories.

I’d love to hear your own adventures with children’s creativity.

Have a Magical Monday!

Jacquie

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Tags: children, kids, youtube