Children are innately gifted play actors, storytellers, dramatic performers. Most children, we can all remember being kids ourselves and losing ourselves in the world of pretend and imagining that we were a vet or a cowboy or an astronaut or whatever it may be.
There’s a natural instinct and a gift in children to be open to that kind of creative play and creative stimulation. Unfortunately, all too soon for many kids, that sort of gets squeezed out and in favor of more serious pursuits and learning and assessment and responsibilities and pressure and so forth and homework and all of those things.
I think that if we’ve done our job well as parents and as caregivers and as educators and as writers that we’ve got to continue to keep that sense of imagination and playfulness alive. The ways that we can do that are so simple. I mean, it’s as simple as reading aloud with our children as often as possible for as long as possible.
Taking that opportunity to demonstrate not only storytelling, but dramatic play. There’s nothing more wonderful than a great read aloud that comes to life because the characters have voices that are specific to themselves. I’m not saying that we have to all be hams or be actors when we’re reading aloud to kids, but to the extent that we can enliven the read aloud experience for them a little bit with that kind of creativity I think really makes a huge difference.
Then looking for ways to support the literary experiences that they are having with other creative opportunities and experiences. For example, if a child is reading or enjoying a particular book, is there a related play or art exhibit or piece of music or a recipe that you can explore together as an extension of that experience to just broaden it that little bit further and enrich it that little bit more.
I think that something sometimes we don’t think about enough. We think that it begins and ends with the reading experience. But if we are really thinking creatively, we can enrich the reading experience so much by bringing that kind of playfulness and inquisitiveness to it through drama, through art, through music through other ways to support the reading experience.
