Imagination

Celebrate Big Imaginations in Picture Books!

Books in themselves encourage our imaginations, don’t they!? Today let’s celebrate big imaginations and wild musings with beautiful new picture books. This list of picture books celebrates dreamers and possibilitarians. I hope they inspire you and your children! Of course there are many more books that the ones listed below. These are the most recently published. […]

Toys That Require Imagination . . . Cardboard

Kids are naturally wired to play and imagine. But when we (I’m guilty of this myself) give them tons of toys that do everything, they don’t need to imagine anything. So give your kids a cardboard challenge – to find the hidden objects in the boxes like Michelangelo did with blocks of granite. The boxes […]

Lost and Found – Small World Play

Hello! I’m Ness, and I blog at One Perfect Day where I share ideas for learning through play, arts and craft ideas, cooking with kids, children’s books and parenting tips. I am so excited to be guest posting at Imagination Soup. Melissa’s site is my go-to source of information and inspiration for everything related to […]

Household Object Challenges

Guest post by Cathy Sheafor, mother, teacher, and blogger at Think!, a blog that inspires children of all ages to think outside of the box, evolved from my desire to create new challenges. Household Object Challenges Research shows that we learn best by doing. Author Daniel Pink in his book, A Whole New Mind, argues […]

We Need Playful Children

by: Megan Rosker, mom, writer, teacher and education advocate. The everyday monotony of life can pull a mom and dad down, allowing them to fall out of touch with their playful side, the side they naturally exhibited as children. However, while our role is to now be responsible to our families, we also have a […]

Hair and Beauty Salon Pretend Play

I like to organize pretend play into 5 Ps — Prepare, Picture Books, Props, Plan and Play, to give your child the information and props for playing Beauty Salon. When you use the Ps, you’ll see rich, longer play scenarios. Before you say, “Why don’t you go play beauty shop?”, take a second, teach some vocabulary, […]

Writer’s Block? Play the What if Game

Guest post by Natasha Wing, author of picture book, How to Raise a Dinosaur. A question writers are often asked is, “How do you get your ideas?” and “How do you overcome writer’s block?” Many of my ideas come from reading. Sometimes I’ll read an article in the newspaper and am curious to know more. […]

Family Activity to Spark Creativity From Author T.A. Barron

Guest post by T.A. Barron, Colorado YA and children’s author, dad and naturalist. As a writer and a father of five great kids—I’ve decided that my favorite job ever is simply being a dad. My only complaint about having children is that they grow up too fast—but there’s nothing I can do about that. There […]