Real Creative Thinking With The Missing Alphabet

As many of you know, my husband and I made the decision to homeschool earlier in the year. This was not an easy decision and the research we have done is never ending. It has touched on almost every aspect of the educational process; from administrative duties to helping our son find his own creative genius.

When I was asked to read The Missing Alphabet: A Parents' Guide to Developing Creative Thinking in Kids, by Susan Marcus, Susie Monday, and Cynthia Herbert (the Founders of The New World Kids Program), I jumped at the opportunity. I want my son to learn to solve problems, think creatively, and build upon and use his knowledge.

The world is constantly changing and we have no way of knowing what it will be like twenty, or even ten years from now. The world is changing at a faster rate than it has throughout history.  We have no way of knowing what skills our children will need, what knowledge they will need to possess, or what options they will have. That is why we have to prepare our sons and daughters for the unknown future.  We have to teach them to have the problem-solving skills, creative thinking processes, and the desire to solve problems.

The Missing Alphabet explains that creativity is not accurately defined by arts and crafts. Creativity has an important role in life, education, and business. The Missing Alphabet is written to redefine the connection between education and business.

Marcus, Monday, and Herbert rely on their decades of experience to create a guide for parents to encourage the creative thinking process in children. With creative sciences and arts slowly being removed from schools, it is more important than ever to take it upon ourselves to instill creative thinking in our children. The book uses the sensory alphabet that is absent in schools and provides parents with a guide to use it in their own life. The sensory alphabet is broken down into the following categories: line, shape, color, texture, space, sound, light, movement, and rhythm.

I love that this book discusses the things besides letters and numbers that I want to teach my son. It is so hard to figure all of it out, and this is going to be my guide through early childhood. The authors provide tools for figuring out how your children learn and how to use that to your advantage to help them learn. There are easy activities that are suitable for home learning (homeschool or not) because children learn everywhere. They are constantly learning, so why not take advantage of that.

This book is by my side when I am planning the school week and stays in the bag with my curriculum materials. I am even using it with my husband so that he can find ideas of learning activities that they can do together. The Missing Alphabet is the top book in my resources and I encourage anyone with young kids to read it.

The Missing Alphabet was provided to me to review. All opinions are my own.