One man’s voice

Testing the creativity of the Children

Posted on January 9th, 2007 in General, On Homeschooling, On Parenting

So I gave my two older kids a task last night. It was a simple task, but not one that should be easily completed. It had two parts and went something like this…

Part 1:
Go in to each room of the house (at your option, the bathrooms) and find one or two things in each room that start with the letter “L” or the letter “M” (you can use any two letters that you want). Write these items down on a piece of paper.

Part 2:
Using the items on the list you just created, write a story. The story must meet the following criteria:

• Use all of the items on the list
• Contain three characters: yourself and two others whose names cannot be found anywhere in the house
• Take place in a county other than the USA
• Take place in winter
• One character must have possession of at least one thing from the list

So my kids got busy. And you know what? They are pretty creative. I will post their stories tomorrow and the following day to show how creative kids can be.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they had only 30 minutes to complete the story and they could not write down the instructions. I figured I’d like to see how they handle the pressure of an instruction list and a deadline. Anyway, wait until tomorrow to see what a 10 year old and a nine year old can come up with given these instructions.