The end of the year: Filled with Christmas fairs, nativities and glitter, oh so much glitter! It’s the time of year when the flurry of festive activity can leave everyone a bit frazzled. But it’s also a time to reflect and celebrate the progress your children have made.
Connecting with other people, and sharing the writing of your favourite young person can be a way to boost their confidence and motivate them to keep on writing. Here, we’ve rounded up some ways you can share your child’s stories and poems with your community, and celebrate their creativity.
- If you’re sending out holiday cards, enclose a copy of a favourite piece of writing from the year to share with your circle. If the story is also on Pobble, send the link so that your friends and family have the opportunity to reply and leave encouraging remarks on the piece itself.
- For holiday cards that include an end-of-year letter about your family’s activities, let each member of the family submit a paragraph. You’ll be surprised at the very different memories that stand out for each person, and sending the letter as a copy that displays everyone’s unique handwriting makes it special.
- Encourage your children to start a letter-writing tradition instead of buying a gift for someone. Here’s one great way to make it work, in postcard-sized bites.
- Easy but crafty: Decorate dishware with favourite phrases or excerpts from pieces your children have written, or have them come up with something unique (like a shape poem). Writing in permanent marker and baking the pieces afterwards will make for enviable gifts. Instructions here.
- When making a decorative paper chain for the home, have your children take turns writing a sentence on each link before turning it into a circle. They can go in turns, adding a new link with a new sentence until you have a story chain that they’ve written together. Only one child? Then it’s the perfect opportunity for you to break out a little creativity of your own and join in.
In what other creative ways do you celebrate the end of the year — and creativity — at home? We always want to hear more ideas on Facebook or Twitter.
