Homeschooling the Creative Child: Language Arts

by Andrea Hermitt | More from this Blogger

05 Jun 2007 06:00 AM

Language Arts can be a challenge for creative children. They could care less about nouns and verbs. Spelling and vocabulary can be boring. Writing a structured essay is incredibly painful. Here are some tools and techniques you can try to teach your creative homeschooler creative arts.

Literature: The literature that I (as a creative person) have connected to and remember most is the literature that I acted out. Do not just have your children read books, but have them dramatize the books as well. Of course you cannot act out every single book your children read (or can you), but you can also recreate stories, change the endings, and create art inspired by the stories. Just look for activities that show that the child read and understood the book.

Parts of sentences: Finding the nouns and verbs in a sentence can be a good challenge, but when you start throwing in adverbs, pronouns, and conjunctions, a creative child can get overwhelmed. My favorite tool for identifying parts of sentences is to purchase a pack of different colored high-lighters and have the child highlight the verbs one color, the nouns another color, the adjective a third color, and so on. Try to be consistent with colors. For instance if you decide verbs will be pink, then verbs need to always be pink forever. This is because the children will associate the sentence parts with the color. They will also be able to identify them at a glance.

Writing: Have your children write stories about themselves. Create hypothetical situations for the child, and have them write based on that. Take it one-step further and have them illustrate the stories as well.

Punctuation and capitalization: Play games to teach the children punctuation and capitalization. Make punctuation flash cards for the children to hold up when you say a sentence. Purchase fun workbooks like Writing Skills Made Fun, Capitalization.

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Learn more about Andrea Hermitt

Andrea Hermitt is a native New Yorker currently residing in GA. She has been married for over 16 years and has two teenage children.

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