How to Foster Imagination Through Reading and Writing

Anyone can be imaginative. Our job as homeschool parents is to give our children a toolbox with enough variety of options to foster their creativity. Both reading and writing are key vehicles for imagination! 

About our guest: Nancy Jo Wilson is a homeschool mother and science fiction writer. Visit her author website here. She's homeschooled for 20+ years in four different states. If she hasn't personally experienced a homeschool hiccough, she knows someone who has. With her sister Carole Jean Flodin, also a homeschool veteran, she wrote The Generic Literature Guide which helps parents find educational value from any novel. 

Janna Koch (00:36):

Welcome to Homeschool Your Way. My name is Janet Koch, your host and BookShark's community manager. In today's episode, I am joined with author Nancy Jo Wilson. We are going to be talking about how you can awaken imagination in your children through reading and writing. Nancy Jo, thank you so much for being here.

Nancy Jo Wilson (00:55):

I am so happy and excited to be here and talk with everyone.

Janna Koch (01:00):

So Nancy, let's start right away with how did you end up in the homeschool realm?

Nancy Jo Wilson (01:06):

Okay. I always knew I wanted to stay at home with my kids, but of course I went to college and I ended up majoring in biology education. And I remember even then thinking, "Wait, they’re certifying me to teach other people's kids. Does that mean I can teach my kids?" I didn't even know that there was a thing called homeschooling, but I already had that thought process of, "Why do I only get to stay at home with them for five years? If I'm an educator, why can't I also be their teacher?" Then later when I heard what homeschooling was, I was like, "Yes!" I didn't even have kids yet and when all my friends were done with their curriculum, I was putting it in my walk in closet and my poor son was like one year old and I had all these books that I was hoarding. Let's be honest, waiting until I could finally homeschool him. Yeah.

Janna Koch (02:04):

So how many children do you have?

Nancy Jo Wilson (02:06):

I have two, but they are 13 years apart. So I've homeschooled them both all the way through. I homeschooled one all the way through and graduated him and then started over and my second son is in sixth grade.

Janna Koch (02:22):

I'm not sure if that's the most beautiful story or the most horrifying story I've ever heard.

Nancy Jo Wilson (02:28):

I like it because we got to push off the empty nest for another couple decades. No, it's wonderful. Having a little boy in the house when we're a little older, it's good. It brings this energy in life. That's what I think.

Janna Koch (02:43):

Yeah, what a unique perspective though, because you kind of have an idea of how you did it the first time and then the second time around, are you aware like, "I did it this way last time, I'm going to try it differently this time?

Nancy Jo Wilson (02:57):

Well, okay, but having three children know they're all different kids. Just as a small example, I'm thinking, "I've got it made. I have this kid who's in ninth grade and I have this second one, I know about homeschooling, I know about parenting," and just a small thing. But my second child, if you read my blog, I call him Peck. Peck is left-handed, so right there it's a small thing, but I didn't know how to teach a left-handed child to write. There's always an adventure. I don't think that you've ever arrived because they're going to come up with something different that you have to figure out and that's what keeps it fun and challenging.

Janna Koch (03:44):

Yeah, I know a lot of people are surprised when I talk about my twins and how opposite they are and I'm like, "Why do you expect just because they were born on the same day, the same gender, that they would have the same personality?" and they are not at all. Then I think bringing in a third variable into the equation …

Nancy Jo Wilson (04:05):

Right.

Janna Koch (04:05):

... my husband tried to tell me it wasn't a good idea, but I just had to push.

Nancy Jo Wilson (04:09):

Well, I think, though, that's the fabulous thing about homeschooling, that you can kind of create things for each individual personality and you have room to do that and you're not trying to manage or fit them into a cookie cutter mold. You can allow them to be them and mold things toward the way they are.

Janna Koch (04:33):

Well what about a homeschool hack? What do you have that you can share with our families?

Nancy Jo Wilson (04:38):

I thought a lot about this and I actually thought about make sure you take time to relationship build because as a parent you're disciplining and correcting all the time and as an educator you're correcting all the time and you want to make sure that you take time during the week to just be a parent and a child enjoying each other's company with no stress or pressure. With my boys, we always have TV shows we enjoy watching together. At lunch break, we would eat and watch our show and talk about our show. But it doesn't have to be that, it could be sports, it could be whatever, but just make sure that each week you have time where you're not the grand corrector and they're not feeling like everything they're doing is under observation or has to be a certain way and y'all can just be.

Janna Koch (05:31):

I like that. I like the idea, maybe you could hashtag it #relationshipoverresults.

Nancy Jo Wilson (05:37):

Yes, exactly. Yeah, I agree.

Janna Koch (05:41):

As they age, you find when they become teenagers and young adults, that becomes even more important.

Nancy Jo Wilson (05:49):

Yes. I would advise a lot, if you want them to talk to you when they're teenagers, you better have already been talking to them when they're younger. Because if you haven't had that relationship and then all of a sudden they're teens and they're like, "Tell me what's going on in your life," that's just weird to them. But if you've always had that relationship, and that means sitting down and listening to lots of conversations about Pokemon, which is not my thing, but it shows you know what? I'm interested in what you're interested in so that when they're 16 and 17 and they're starting to reach that phase where they're figuring things out, they still know they could talk to you about anything because they could when they were little.

Janna Koch (06:37):

I think that relationship building is another opportunity to talk about this idea of awakening the imagination because …

Nancy Jo Wilson (06:45):

I agree.

Janna Koch (06:46):

... we are so quick to hold our babies and our toddlers and open up those board books and really get so excited when they ask those questions and we're like, "Oh my gosh, yes, you're amazing. You're going to be an Einstein. I know it for sure." Then I find that not necessarily in the homeschool realm, it just kind of depends on your community, but we start to read less and less, children learn how to read on their own so then we kind of say, "Okay, well I'm going to go ahead and ask you to read that so that I can then go do this." That might be out of necessity because you are homeschooling more than one child-

Nancy Jo Wilson (07:24):

Right.

Janna Koch (07:24):

Multiple levels. There's so many reasons why but I think that one of the reasons that as homeschoolers we continue to push this idea of literature-based homeschooling is because we do understand the importance of not only being read to, and I encourage parents to not stop at a certain age.

Nancy Jo Wilson (07:47):

Right.

Janna Koch (07:47):

I know my 13 year old is semi-resistant and so we kind of go back and forth on how much I read to her.

Nancy Jo Wilson (07:54):

Mm-hmm.

Janna Koch (07:55):

Part of that might just be because I'm not as available as she would like me to be, so she's out of that, but we know that when we redo our kids, we are awakening their imagination.

Nancy Jo Wilson (08:05):

Yes.

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Janna Koch (10:20):

You and I had talked before that for the children who maybe haven't exercised this muscle as much and we ask them to be imaginative, that's overwhelming.

Nancy Jo Wilson (10:34):

It is. I told you the example of my son. We watched Encanto and I thought, "Oh," because he loved the movie. I thought, "This'll be great."

If you haven't seen the movie. The people inherit specific gifts or powers and then the house itself creates them a room that has to do with their gifts or powers. I was like, "Oh this is awesome." I was like, "Okay, you decide what your Encanto power would be and then design your bedroom." I had no idea, but it completely stressed him out.

He was like, "Well what do you think my power would be? What powers do you think?" Just trying to decide on a power was hard. He has a very linear, analytical mind, so trying to pick a power out of thin air was difficult for him. The thing is, I've been doing this homeschooling for over 20 years. I know this, but for some reason I didn't engage it.

What I should have said was, "Choose one of these three powers to be yours," and taking into account what I know about him as a personality, choose one of these three that kind of fit with him, and then design your room. Then I've narrowed the field down and he's just picking one of these three instead of trying to come up with something out of thin air because an analytical child needs a germ or a crumb to build on whereas a incredibly creative child, you usually have to reign them in. "No, we're not going to Lowe's buy the wood so you can actually build the room. You can draw it, it's fine." But your more analytical child, you've got to kind of teach them.

I remember when he was little, I had to teach him sometimes how to pretend because he just needed that germ of idea. These are the Power Rangers, who are they battling? I had to give him that little bit of ... But then once I did, his imagination took off. Sometimes it helps to just give them options and then they can go from there.

Janna Koch (12:55):

I also think as homeschool parents, when we have very specific curriculum that we are using and we feel comfortable with, I've used BookShark, I'm in my seventh year, I have not deviated, it works really well for us and it's literature-based, so I'm loving that we read because that's my jam. Let's read, we can talk about it. I remember telling my college professor, "Can't we just talk about it? Do I have to put it on a paper? I would much rather chat with you about it." When I tell people I'm living my dream because I get paid to talk, it is the absolute truth.

Nancy Jo Wilson (13:29):

Yeah.

Janna Koch (13:31):

But when we read these assignments or lessons, sometimes we don't feel even ourselves the freedom to be creative and imaginative with these lessons. I know in the past I have really hindered my children by sticking to, "This is what it says to do. We are going to do it." Now granted that is important and our children need to learn to follow directions and these are the rules, but the whole point of us homeschooling is to individualize our children's education.

Nancy Jo Wilson (14:06):

Yes. I'm eclectic, I change my curriculum except for Math-U-See from year to year because I get bored with it, my poor kid. But he has some curriculum that's just workbook-based curriculum and it's just da da da do this. What I do to bring that imagination into it is I do four days a week of academic school and then one day a week where we do more hands-on creative things. He's about to be starting reading about the ancient civilizations. I do research online, I don't necessarily come up with everything myself, but I might Google the ancient ages and wait for something to hit me with a spark and then I'll be like, "Oh, we could try to make one of those statues out of clay." Sometimes when I have something that's super set, I still try to look at it and go, "Okay, how can I bring reading and writing into this? Let me go find a book. Let me go think of a creative writing project we can do on top of it."

But then you have to keep in mind that sometimes you don't want to overwork your kids, so that means you might drop one of the assignments. It's okay, it's okay to do that. You don't have to do everything they say, although I'm talking to the BookShark person and you'll probably go, "Well we spend a lot of time," but if there is a style of assignment they've got that is not clicking with your kid, it's okay to skip that section and search for something else and it's okay to go, "We read this book now write a paragraph from the point of view of the dog in that book," or something like that, putting a creative spin on it, even if it's a set followed thing is my thought.

Janna Koch (15:56):

Well, and we even encourage parents by saying, "We give you an Instructor's Guide; it is not a dictator. It is there to help you feel safe and keep you on a path if that path is working for you," but we are trying to help a parent do the things that we know help children grow and educate them. But it is not, "If you miss this day, you have wrecked your children and just give up now because it's over with."

Nancy Jo Wilson (16:27):

Yes. The other thing, because we're talking about imagination, I realized I wanted to define that. Because I think you say imagination and most people think that their kids should be dreaming up worlds with mermaids and sea dragons and that kind of thing. But I believe fully that every child has imagination. Even if you have an analytical child, when they're little, they're still pretending the Hot Wheels car is driving down the road. They might not be pretending it's driving on Mars, but they're still pretending. When you expand that imagination, so you may have a child who loves math and you may go, "Well, there's no imagination in there," but when they sit down and develop a database, there's imagination in there. They're having to dream up and think about how to move and how to let their brain explore to create that, so they're still using imagination. It's not as flashy as somebody else but they're still using their imagination, which is why you need to foster it, why you need to stretch them outside their comfort zone and challenge them.

Because if you think about it, every invention started in someone's imagination. They were sitting back going, "How do I solve this? And they mentally started to get a picture of what may be solved." Well, that's still imagination and that's why you want to try and foster it in your children. Even if you have a very analytical one, it's in there, just find out where it is and encourage it. If they're all about dinosaurs, there is literally nothing wrong with all year every short story they write being about a dinosaur, every book they read being about a dinosaur. If that's what's getting it for them, it is going to make their imagination go.

Janna Koch (18:25):

I think we discount that every innovation that we come across, every advancement in science and technology, you're right, it's all imagination.

Nancy Jo Wilson (18:38):

Right.

Janna Koch (18:38):

Problem solving in and of itself is imagination.

Nancy Jo Wilson (18:42):

Yes, it is, yes.

Janna Koch (18:42):

If you have a child that they just don't like writing, they're not really into reading, you're actually doing them a disservice because the atrophy in that side of the brain that is happening when you go, "Oh, but they're really good in science, they're really good in math." Well, actually those two subjects need imagination.

Nancy Jo Wilson (19:04):

They do. They absolutely need imagination.

I do have tricks if you have reluctant readers. One thing that, because my boys were good readers, but they didn't enjoy sitting down to read a book. I think it was just because they're not into sitting still, they'd rather be ... My older son, Tech, I mean he's still at 25 rarely just walks through a room. He usually combat dives through a room. They're not sitters and so I think that's why reading's not their favorite thing. But one of the tricks is, okay, bedtime is 9:00, but if you're reading, you can stay up till 9:30.

Janna Koch (19:51):

Mm-hmm.

Nancy Jo Wilson (19:51):

Another thing I do in school is what I call free reading. There's the books we're reading for school that we usually do read aloud, but then there's free reading, they can pick whatever book they want to read and read whatever they want to read during free reading. But the trick is if you're going to put that out there, you need to have the books available. Whether you stay on top of and are already and check out a wide variety of books so they can find what they like. Or I'm library challenged. No matter how many reminder notes, no matter what I write on my calendar, I'm always late so I don't do the library. I instead, if I'm in a thrift store or a store with a bargain bin, I've even found them in antique stores, I'll go searching for cheap books and then I just have them available.

When he is free reading or he's only allowed electronics certain times of the day and he'll come to me and go, "I'm bored," by way, imagination grows in boredom. They need to have times for their bored because then as they start to entertain themselves, it's building their imagination. If he's bored, I'm like, "Go read a book," and then there's plenty and he could pick one. Even cartoon books. My older son, I had to start with Foxtrot and Calvin and Hobbs and Garfield during his free read, that was the only thing he was going to read. But by having those available and then you hit on what they like but you need the resources there if you're going to take those actions.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

Nancy Jo Wilson (22:48):

I recall there was a time in one of my daughter's lives that she really was getting into, I thought comic books, I was corrected, they are graphic novels.

Nancy Jo Wilson (22:55):

Yes.

Janna Koch (22:57):

I remember going to a librarian and saying, "Am I doing her disservice because this is really all that she's into right now?"

She said, "We have college professors that come in and all they do is they sit here and they read graphic novels." She was like, "Your child is reading, she's enjoying it, she's engaged."

I said, "Okay," and never again. Then I started reading some graphic novels. I found classics that were then turned into graphic novels or vice versa, I'm assuming if it's classic probably that way. But I was amazed how much I did enjoy it. Now granted, I had read the classic first, so I knew right where some of the lack of word count they would make up in the picture that you were looking at, which I thought was just amazing. That is another hack. Look at graphic novels or comic books for your kids.

Nancy Jo Wilson (23:48):

I think those work very well with reluctant readers because there's not as many words they have to struggle with. But at the same time, they still have these elaborate pictures that help them build a world in their head and really wake up that imagination. Even if it's not as many words, they're still getting also that just effect of, "Let me picture this in my head and what's going on," and all of that, yeah. My younger son reads graphic novels.

Janna Koch (24:18):

Another thing that I have seen some of instructors that my girls have been under over the years, this idea of taking a classic fairytale and twisting it.

Nancy Jo Wilson (24:30):

Yes.

Janna Koch (24:30):

You're within the bounds. For someone who is that linear thinker, "I couldn't possibly come up with a new fairytale. Why should I anyways? We already have some good ones." Take a story you already know and twist it up.

Nancy Jo Wilson (24:43):

Yes, [inaudible 00:24:45].

Janna Koch (24:44):

Sometimes I know my girls would come to me and I'd be like, "You didn't really change a whole lot," bad on me, looking back. I could've just encouraged a little bit differently. But same thing with the graphic novel. The story ends, "Well, can you add to the story? Can you give a story a different ending?" It's little ways that we can tweak the reading and the writing so it's not overwhelming. A lot of times kids will say, "I'm bored," or, "This is dumb," it's not necessarily that they don't want to do it, they don't know how to do it.

Nancy Jo Wilson (25:16):

They don't know how, it's true. They don't know how to come from, and that was a hard thing for me to learn. One thing is parents is, especially when we're homeschooling, to realize that your kids don't necessarily learn the way that you learned or think the way that you think. As I said, I had biology education degree and I taught in a public school for a year and I taught in private school for a year and I've taught in a ton of co-ops. Me being an incredibly creative person, it was hard for me to understand people don't just sit around all daydreaming up worlds and making up new vocabulary for things. I had to sit back and go, "Okay, not everybody thinks like me. How do I spark that in my children?"

You brought up the word innovation, which I thought was interesting because Tech, my older son is very creative. I say that Tech is innovative, he's very innovative but to me, innovation is taking something and using it in a different way than it was used before whereas being creative, you're just dreaming it up out of nothing, but innovation there's this concept and then you're modifying it. My son is incredibly innovative, but I had to realize that means I have to give him that initial thing that he can then modify, like you said, change the fairytale. Or if there's a book they've really liked, tell them to change something about that. What's something you would've liked better and write that paragraph.

A writing assignment that I have found every kid always likes is write a story from the point of view of an inanimate object like a lamp. What's a day in the life of a lamp like? What is the lamp thinking about? But give them that idea, that story prompt or that concept. And they can usually run with it, but you do have to give them that germ. Yeah.

Janna Koch (27:25):

Another great option, and I don't know if you had these around when you were a kid, but my mom used to read to us the choose your own adventure books.

Nancy Jo Wilson (27:31):

Yeah, love them.

Janna Koch (27:34):

You're at a fork in the road, your character, main character has to make a choice, and then you get to decide the fate of your character. Then if you're like, "Oh, I didn't really like how that turned out," or, "Let's see how it turns out if he chooses differently," and so then you go back and you go to the opposite choice that you had had him made. As you're working through that, I think why can't we do that with our kids and different writing assignments? Like, "Hey, this is the choice that he made in the story that you're reading or they're asking you to write about, but what if you just go in and you have him make the opposite choice? What road does that lead him down? Where can he be?"

(28:12):

Again, we have children who just aren't necessarily what we think of as imaginative, but if we give them a box that has enough tools in it, anyone can be imaginative.

Nancy Jo Wilson (28:26):

Yes. I agree with that 100%. That's a great way to describe it. A box with enough tools.

Another thing that I have used is there's a product called Story Cubes. There might also be knockoff things, but they're literally big dice with different pictures on them, people, the sunshine, whatever. You roll them and then you try to make a story out of the pictures that appear. That's also a fun thing to do because again, the germ is given, but where do you take it once it's out there?

Janna Koch (29:01):

With all of our technology, you have a child who maybe can't write down everything that they want. You can take that idea of the story and the pictures and the story, have them record themselves and then you write it down. Then when you read it at dinner and say, "Listen to the story that Johnny created today," and even he's going to be like, "That was my story?"

Because so many times my youngest will just throw out these words that I'm like, "That was a big word. That's a complicated word. I'm not going to ask you to spell it, I'm not going to spell it because I probably couldn't," but she uses it in the correct context. A lot of times when children go to write, they do have an idea of what they want to say, but it gets stuck in translation. Dictation is a huge hack for helping kids be imaginative in their writing.

Nancy Jo Wilson (29:57):

Beyond that, sometimes pretending they're acting out is a good precursor to writing because they're learning how to make a ... But my son has many times made the scene out of Legos and then acted it out with two Lego figures. That's a similar thing. They're dictating, they're speaking it out, they're thinking it through. Also a family with a lot of children, well, you can have the children act out the scene together or write the story together or tell a story together. That's just a hack of not everything has to be each individual child. There are some things they can do as a group so you're not coming up with, say, seven different lessons. You can have the whole group do something and it's handling it all.

Janna Koch (30:46):

That's right. You have group collaboration, you have give and take, you have so many skills that can be learned in working through that. I do find it slightly ironic, although I shouldn't, that your youngest son Peck is innovative when you are very creative.

I want to just tell you guys a little bit, Nancy Jo is an author. Not only do you author some fiction, science fiction.

Nancy Jo Wilson (31:13):

Yes.

Janna Koch (31:14):

Clean-

Nancy Jo Wilson (31:15):

Clean science fiction.

Janna Koch (31:17):

... novels. You also have some nonfiction workbooks that you have created. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

Nancy Jo Wilson (31:25):

The one that applies to what we're talking about here, Generic Literature Guide. If you remember generic food from when we were young, the labels were black and white, and that's why I made that's very nondescript book. But my sister and I, because she has an English degree and I'm a writer, we've always been very comfortable with letting your children read what they want to read. Now I adore the classics, that was never an issue for me, but neither of my boys wanted to read the assigned books that came with the curriculum. That was not their thing. I would just let them read whatever they wanted to read because I could then sit down and talk about literary concepts with them. "Let's discuss the protagonist, the antagonist," all those fancy words. But she and I realized that not every parent has the degrees we have and the abilities that we have so we decided to write a book.

This is a resource, it is not a curriculum. It is supposed to be a resource to help parents let their kid read whatever they want to read, even if it's a graphic novel and then know these are the things we can talk about. It's laid out. There's worksheets in, you can make as many copies as you want, but so there are worksheets for chapter summary, but it's laid out. You've got a worksheet filled out with examples. Then of course we have the blank worksheet. Whatever your child is reading, you can still go, "Okay, let's talk about simile and metaphors," because all of those components are in a book.

Here's one we used in writing this book. It's a Black Panther book. There's all kinds of literary devices in here, there's onomatopoeia, there's conflict, there's theme. All of that is in this book and your child might want to read this, but then you're like, "Okay, so how do we talk about it?"

We also wrote it with the intention that you could use it all away from kindergarten through high school. We have a section in there saying, "If you've got a kindergartner, just focus on setting or just focus on this." Then if you want, you could just hand the whole thing to your high school student and they can fill it out as they're reading their books. You can also adjust it based on age level.

But really our desire is always to equip homeschoolers to succeed. Always. This is why I loved going to conventions because I absolutely love having those conversations at the table. They can say, "This is a trouble I'm having with my student," whether it's reading related or not. I'll talk about math, "This is what worked for me," but just the desire to equip you to do what you can. If you have a child that really would benefit from reading what they want to read, that's what's going to spark their imagination, then you can still find educational value and that's really the important part.

Janna Koch (34:42):

As a comfort to parents, I homeschooled 8th through 12th grade, I was able to go to college. I didn't read a lot of the classics when I was going through my homeschool. I will tell you now that every year I read one or two classics because at this point in my life I want to do that, I'm excited to do that. Then I have to find some high school seniors that will talk with me about it if I can find that someone without actually read the book. But even in book clubs, we have this desire that I think some people are worried if we get away from the classics that we're going to lose that sense of conservatism and wonder of what has gone before us. But I would argue that if you allow your children to read what they're comfortable with, what engages them on their own, I obviously very much believe in reading living history and all of those good things as you work through curriculum, but I promise if they have the love of learning and reading, they will come back around to it. Now there's so many books that are a twist on the classics. I know my twins, they go to the bookstore with their friends and they buy each other books at Christmas and birthdays. I don't know that these were kids that-

Nancy Jo Wilson (36:03):

That is beautiful.

Janna Koch (36:04):

We're so excited.

Nancy Jo Wilson (36:09):

Sorry, I was like, "Aw." That makes a writer happy.

Janna Koch (36:11):

Well, Nancy Jo, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be on this episode and encourage parents on just ways to be awakening the imagination in their children. Thank you for the sharing the stories of your sons. I will write them a thank you note as well.

Nancy Jo Wilson (36:28):

I have really enjoyed being here and I appreciate you asking me to be here because I think exploring imagination and igniting imagination is just incredibly important for really having a well rounded education, just like the arts and music are also important because you're developing and it doesn't mean your kid's going to be good at all of them. They may be terrible, but the fact that they're trying still works that and develops that and wakes it up and I just think it's so important. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.