Imagination Stories

Families are experiencing a creativity crisis. Our project involves creating 'Imagination Stories' at home, schools & online. We want to help reconnect parents to their children through harnessing the power of imagination

For parents with children aged 3 - 10.

The more we become connected through technology, the more we're becoming disconnected to our children.

Our aim is to help children to develop social skills, build self-confidence, boost intellectual growth, practice language skills and become adaptable to work out fears and worries. It's also to help give parents a helping hand to spark their creativity. And most of all it's about learning by having fun.

Did you know 25% of Australian adults with 4-5 year olds either never read or only read a book to them 1 - 2 days a week. This jumps to 31% of adults with 6-7 year olds! And 54% of families are concerned about their child spending too much time in front of the TV, computers or doing other sedentary things. That's about 1, 100, 000 households!

TIME TO CHANGE

We have successfully crowd funded a campaign (http://www. pozible.com/project /27310) to create a fun, illustrated story book. We also facilitate engaging, 1 hour, impromptu interactive sessions in schools and hospitals. Plus we're building a social media community for inspiration and sharing with like-minded people.

You can buy the book and discover more video stories and tips on our website:
www. imaginationstories.com. au

Feel free to share your ideas on this page of how you spark your child's imagination. Or how you spark your own and connect with your child. Or simply talk about the challenges you face in parenting today.

Engaging with your children is more than just reading them books. It's interaction, listening, acknowledging their ideas, and building them into adventures.

Our Imagination Story project is straight forward and based on creating a short story around 3 key words before bedtime (or anytime).

Let your child give you 3 completely random words or themes. For example, they could be super skateboard, a King and a forest. Then build a story with a beginning, middle and an end around these three words. Ask your child to remind you of the words throughout the story so that you remember what they are and to weave them in : -)

The stories can be as long or as short as you both want. However don't just tell the story AT your child. Let them ENGAGE in it and help create the twists and turns with you. Let them add some description to places, people and things that you weave in. Before long they'll be asking you to give them 3 words and they'll start creating exciting stories as well.

Sometimes you can weave in themes that you may want to teach your child such as bravery, helping others, respect for the environment, looking after animals, sharing etc etc. Or you can simply explain in a fun way what some words mean as you go.

EG: we love the word verdant (which means very green). Imagine a verdant valley leading to a forest, called Fiblet's Forest, full of strange and wonderful creatures. Or better still imagine a forest full of giant, purple trees! Imagine what happens next. . .

So try an imagination story tonight before your child goes to bed. However please make sure you do one thing - make sure you both have lots of fun. And let your imaginations run wild.

And if you'd like to purchase the book, E-book or watch more video stories, simply visit www. imaginationstories.com. au