So Melitsa asked me this question:

We sit around the table for our meals. I have a 5 yr old, a 2 year and soon to be born little one. Can you give any tips for starting points of what to talk to the kids about?

Here are some ideas:

1. I can’t resist the opportunity to enrich vocabulary at the table – point out new foods that she’s unfamiliar with.
2. Talk about her day – what she did, where she went, what did she play there?
3. Introduce a new word to describe foods – delicious, scrumptious, tasty, yummy, delectable.
4. Ask her what was the absolute worst thing that happened to her that day and the absolute worst.
5. Ask questions about foods, cutlery. Is that a blue pudding? Is this a round plate?
6. Introduce her to taste words – spicy, sweet, bitter.
7. Ask questions that encourage creativity – if you were an apple, what color would you be?
8. Fantasize about her dream dish, with all her favorite ingredients – sugar, her favorite fruits, her favorite choice of meat etc. The end result won’t be palatable, but it will make her smile.
9. Ask her to bring a favorite object to the dinner table – it could be a favorite toy or picture, something from her nature table, a book, anything. Now ask her what’s so important about the object and why it means so much to her.
10. If you can, choose a theme for dinner. Maybe an upcoming family event or reunion, or a vacation. It’s easy to get kids talking when they feel like they are participating in adult events.
11. Select a day as Dress Up for Dinner Day and ask your kids to dress to the hilt – tiaras, feather boa, clutch. Help them get ready in all their finery, and include the costume as the central theme at dinner time. Why did she choose that dress? Who is she tonight? What kind of jewelry is she wearing?

So, what do you talk about with your kids at meal times?

Kids love stories, and we love them because they encourage the use of imagination, and boost language and vocabulary skills.

Take a few minutes to create your child’s own story, by including his name, names of family members and pets, things in his house, his friends, his favorite games etc.

It could go like this.

Once upon a time, long long ago, there lived a wonderful little girl (her name). She lived with her mother (your name here), her father (her father’s name here), her brother and sister (insert her sibling’s names here. If you have pets include their names too). (Name) lived in a house with (number of rooms) rooms. There was a hall, a kitchen, a dining room, (insert all other rooms in the house here). In the hall there was a coat stand and a… (insert other objects here). In the kitchen, there was an oven,… (insert kitchen appliances, utensils, crockery and other objects here).

Every morning, (name) would wake up, brush her teeth… (insert her daily morning activities).

You can continue in this vein including other things your child loves to do, her favorite TV shows and games, the names of her friends and playmates, her aunts and uncles, grandparents etc.

This activity has multiple benefits. Your child learns to practice the names of people, objects and other things that are familiar to her, and she learns to form complete sentences. It has one more benefit that I absolutely love – it boosts self esteem and makes her feel important because the story revolves around her. That in itself, is enough reason to take part in this activity.

Have fun!

Teaching preschoolers to be creative can sound like a bit of a paradox. After all, isn’t creativity supposed to spring from some bottomless fountain only the luckiest among us possess?

Not entirely true. Kids have an uncolored, pure view of the world that will most likely sully as they get older. That’s why there’s such innocence and charm in a child’s play, and that’s why kids say the darndest things that end up making the most sense. That’s also why so many foundations and people like Jennifer Tresh fight to foster the creative side of kids .

The most commonly used way to encourage creativity in preschoolers is to allow them to experiment with arts and crafts and activities. I’ll go into these in depth in other posts, but for now I want to concentrate on the easiest way to encourage creativity and social skills in your child. Arts and crafts are excellent options, but they can be a little time consuming. And some days, your child is not going to be ready for yet another vegetable painting masterpiece.

However, there’s another way you can teach your child to use his imagination without the use of paints and crayons – role playing. It’s simple, doesn’t cost a cent and best of all, it does double duty by combining creative ability enhancement with bonding.

Role paying doesn’t have to be all pirates and daggers and adventure stories. Simple every day activities like going to the grocery store or the bank, or a trip to the beach can be used as themes for role play. It’s something kids enjoy because they love activities that help them pretend to be adults.

I love role play as an imaginative activity because kids are free to assume the roles they want to. Participate freely in the role play, and follow your child’s lead.

If you’re doing an “entertaining” theme, where your child is the host and you’re the guest, follow all social protocol, the way you do yourself as an adult. But, allow them to talk and react the way they want to in the imaginary situation. This particular theme has a triple edged benefit – your child learns to be creative in his responses, his social skills are enhanced, and it creates an incredible opportunity for the two of you to enjoy your time together.

To make things easier, and to help make role play a regular part of your routine, create prop boxes for some much loved themes that your preschooler and you have. Say you love playing shop, set aside a large cardboard box or get one of those big plastic containers, and throw things in there that you could use for your role play – toy fruit and vegetables, toy currency. When you’re actually playing, grab some stuff from around the house, and lay it out neatly just like in the shop.

Separate boxes by theme and label them on the outside. For a beach theme, your prop box would contain a beach ball, sunglasses, a large plastic table cloth that you could scatter with shells and a pair of beach towels for the two of you.

Once you’re done with your little game, just stuff everything back in the box and put it away for another time.