Try This Creative Idea To Get Conversation Flowing With Your Child

Here’s a simple, creative activity idea to try with your child to spark conversation and memories.

I trained as a Primary School Teacher and my first passion was for children’s wellbeing. This led me into pastoral care roles in schools, whereby I was responsible for supporting children’s self-esteem, social skills and emotional literacy. Part of my job as a Learning & Behaviour Mentor was to find ways to chat about how the children were feeling, to help identify and name those feelings as well as give them strategies for dealing with them. Wondering how to spark conversation with your child? Try this…

The activity below was one I used for all sorts of things, from enjoying holiday memories to helping deal with grief. It’s a simple and practical way of helping a child to focus on their feelings and to stimulate a conversation which feels purposeful to the child.

Hope you and your children enjoy it, even if it’s just for the sake of creating a decorative ornament!

Memory Jar

Essentially, you’re going to be layering coloured salt in a jar.

What you’ll need:

• Salt
• Small jar (try a jam jar or if you want to get fancy, this set from Amazon is what I used.*)
• Coloured chalk sticks
• Paper

What to do:

1. Pour some salt onto a sheet of paper.
2. Choose a coloured chalk stick.
3. Roll the chalk stick into the chalk.
4. Watch the salt change colour miraculously before your very eyes.
5. Tip the salt into the jar to create a layer.
6. Repeat with a different colour.

Tips:

Don’t shake the jar as the colours will mix but you can gently tap it to move the salt into position.

Experiment with both flat and uneven layers as well as different levels of thickness.

When you’ve rolled your chalk into the salt and are ready to pour it into the jar, lift the paper sheet and fold it in half, pinching at one end, to make it easy to pour the salt.

Don’t eat the salt.

Ideas:

Holiday Jar

How about reminiscing about a family holiday and encouraging your child to create a sand layer for each of their memories of it. For example, a blue chalk layer could represent going swimming in the sea. It’s a lovely way to evoke memories and stimulate conversation. You could even create a little ‘key’ to tie around or stick to the jar to remind you what the memories are for each colour/layer.

Family & Friends Jar

You could adapt this idea and use the colours to represent people, past or present.

All About Me Jar

Encourage your child to think of positive aspects of their personality or skills. Great for raising self-awareness and self-esteem!

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* The link above is my Amazon Affiliate Link. You can click on the link which will take you to Amazon where if you buy the items I have sourced for you, I may receive a small commission which helps support this blog, thank you so much. These recommendations are my own and are items we have enjoyed using personally at our own expense so we hope you enjoy these handpicked products as much as we do here in The Hencoop!