Improving Writing Skills for Kids
If you want to make your child become a great writer, you should cultivate the habit of writing from an early age, since the children have been able to read and write. According to Piaget, in Hurlock (2005: 39) cognitive abilities that allow the formation of understanding, developed in two main periods which includes four stages, sensory stage, preoperational stage, concrete operations stage, and the stage of formal operations.
- During the sensor motor stage of cognitive development of children begin to develop an understanding of themselves as separate and distinct from the environment, causality, time and space. This understanding can be obtained through sensor motor exploration. Sensor motor stage lasts from birth until the child was 2 years old.
- Preoperational stage of cognitive development that took place since the age of 2 years to 6 years, when the child is capable of using language and symbolic thinking. This is evident in their imaginative play. Today is a time of egocentric thinking, children are not able to accept the views of others and unable to solve problems involving the concepts of numbers or classes of objects.
- The third stage of cognitive development is the stage of concrete operations, which lasted from children aged 6 years to 11 years or 12 years. At this time the concept is vague and unclear from the preschool to be more concrete and specific. This allows children to begin to think deductively, formed the concept of space and time, and classify objects. They are able to take the role of others and this opened the way to a greater sense of reality.
- In the fourth and final stage of cognitive developments, the stage of formal operations, which started since the age of 11 AAU 12 years and continue, children are able to consider all likely in solving problems and capable of reasoning on the basis of hypotheses and propositions. As a result they can review the issue from different point of view and may consider various factors when solving problems. Children become more flexible thinking and concrete and they are able to combine information from several different sources.
With hope, the children will develop skills honed words, find an interesting object of discussion, and produced a fantastic paper. So, will rise of professional writers and ultimately the books in the market is no longer enlivened by the books out to be translated, the nation's children's books will grow to all the bookstores that exist in Indonesia.
Of course, to foster interest in writing in children requires several stages.
- Cultivate the ability of a child's imagination, by telling a few short stories that are easily digested by them, this story may be a short picture story which only amounted to 10-12 pages, in hopes that they can easily digest the meaning to be conveyed by the story. To be able to know their success rate in digesting the story, give the task to them to make a summary of the story, either in the form of retelling or write back in a few short sentences. After a few times summarized results showed good results, has been told in outline the meaning that has been told, then, begin by telling stories that substance, or a long story, a story that needs a full concentration when listening.
- Allowing reading. To be able to cultivate this habit, there is need for cooperation between parents and teachers in this success. Parents should take the time to invite children to the bookstore or library, every month or every few weeks and if possible buy a book which, according to the child interesting, create a library at home and at school, and make the schedule mandatory for children to read
- Create a resume Familiarize stories that have been there. After passing through two previous stages, child shall have progressed, both in understanding the stories we tell and have been accustomed to read on their own, without orders from us, begin to create a new task for the child, namely by asking him to make a summary of the story he had read. With multiple stages along with the growth of children. Every month there are developments, improved, every two weeks and so on.
- Familiarize make free stories, different stories that already exist. At this stage, children begin to be guided in issuing his imagination with the use of words and can be written into the sentence. After experiencing several stages, the child has had the ability to digest the story and retell in their words. Children have had to issue stock, develop, and write it in story form. At the beginning of its implementation, is still frequently encountered, the stories of children that sentence has not been uniform, but at the beginning and end of the story has led and describe an event.
- Publish it. after the children create a story, published the story with a stick in the bedroom, living room (by parents) or in the classroom and on school bulletin board (by teachers), after a few stories have been produced and according to you (parent or teacher) has produced a story Good, directed, composed, then publish the story by making the book a collection of stories with your own capital or can you promote to places of printing, electronic and print media.
Hopefully with some of these stages, could provide a solution for parents or teachers to develop her writing skills. With hope that the child can become capable writer’s books best-seller and can enliven bookstores with their works, the work of the nation.