Welcome to play! Invite a creative content creator into your child’s life and watch the magic happen! Who needs video games, anorexic dolls, and regimented craft kits when kids have so many stories ripe for exploration and invention. A creative content creator isn’t a babysitter or a simple craft coordinator; our specialized skill set opens imaginations and turns story into a personalized – ridiculously fun! – physical reality.

Why let companies and conferences have all the perks of our research, organized methodology, and highly developed sense of wonder? The creative process is universal, and let’s face it, kids are already ahead of the game. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be entrusted with keeping their imaginations fluid and engaged throughout childhood’s natural synaptic pruning. Inspired by story (either the child’s own or other favourites), a creative content creator can design personalized projects, interactive books, events, and custom craft kits to stretch and preserve imagination while bringing an entirely new level of engagement to play. These objects and experiences are wonderfully unique gifts with lifelong benefits.

So let’s open my Magic-Mary-Poppins-Carpet-Bag and take a trip through a multi-session example of how a creative life coach can – how do I put this – blow your kid’s mind! And after watching how much fun she or he is having, you just might be tempted to bring your own stories into reality. From storied portraits, personalized recipes, to anniversary gifts… just imagine the possibilities…

Bug’s Booger Buddies Summer Kids Game – A dialogue in creativity

Preparation: During our preparatory interview, I discover that this lovely parent has been telling her daughter (and two little cousins) amazing bedtime stories about a wacky troop of adventuring insects for years.

Session One: To open the creative dialogue with the three girls (ages 6, 7, and 8), I bring all supplies (pre-formed icing sheets, icing ‘glue’, and candies) needed to make edible insects. After priming their curiousity by removing each material and tools, one by one, from my Magic-Mary-Poppins-Carpet-Bag (all hail the original creativity consultant!) I announce, to rapt and astonished faces, “We’re gonna eat bugs!!” While they’re busy crafting/snacking/giggling-like-crazy, I invite them to teach me all about their imaginary bug world through ‘soft interviewing’ and gentle, non-invasive assistance with the materials.

Preparation: After getting to know the girls, and their ‘booger-philic’ sense of humour, I take one of the original characters (Bug) and create 3 new ‘Booger Buddies’ to extend the story based on my notes from the first session. Note: it is the creativity consultant’s responsibility to educate themselves about appropriate content for different age groups (e.g. bathroom humour can be fine, but let’s keep the adult content for the adults!). Using foam modeling clay, mini-water guns (found at the dollar-store), and pipe cleaners, I design the 4 Boogerizing game pieces.

Session Two: Along with my ubiquitous Magic-Mary-Poppins-Carpet-Bag, I bring a big green bucket filled with tissue wrapped game components (streamer, glitter stickers, dice, water filler) and the foam game piece characters. After the fun and surprise of opening their multiple presents, I outline the game’s basic premise and invite the girls to paint and decorate the 4 Bug’s Booger Buddies along with making up their names, special skills, and giving their own suggestions for the game.

Preparation: I make four character pages for the girls with drawings of their Booger Buddies, names, and special skills. Also, I come up with 50 easy and 50 hard Boogerizing challenges for this DIY kids game. Why so many? Bug’s Booger Buddies can be played endless times by shaking up the challenges and changing the streamer orientation of the giant ‘gameboard’. The idea here is to take the girls’ imagination and create a new story, with a unique vocabulary (Booger Buddies + Boogerize!), and a tangible, reusable end product invention.

Session Three: For our climax session, I show up wearing a fuzzy monkey bikini top over my t-shirt and a high energy party attitude. I invite the girls to get started by colouring their characters (either how they painted them or totally different exoskeleton outfits). Then they take turns laying out the streamer all through the house and into the backyard. After the trail has been set, they place the glitter stickers at regular and not-so-regular intervals. We fill up our Boogerizers and take turns rolling the die. Each sticker is a step, and whoever lands on it takes it back to the challenge bags and reads her Boogerize (water squirting) challenge (insect stickers for hard and flower stickers for easy). Here’s the crazy fun part! We all go with her and watch the mayhem of challenges like… Boogerize up someone else’s nose! Boogerize the healthiest food in the fridge! Boogerize an adult! Boogerize 4 different types of plants! Boogerize in someone’s shoe! Boogerize something starting with R! Some challenges are designed to be educational, some more physical, some nonsense, and some mischievous. All players keep a collection of their stickers to trade after the game. This game is over when the end of the streamer and/or a time limit is reached, or all the stickers have been collected.

As I’m sure you can imagine, this DIY kids game turned out to be completely bonkers wet n’ wild summer fun! We had a blast (literally and figuratively), and the girls’ grandmother recently let me know that my new feisty little friends haven’t stopped talking about it! The rules are flexible enough to allow for continued evolution, and the story is personal and physically/mentally engaging.

A creative content creator is so much more than social media writer or brainstorming surrogate… we hold a secret… we can make your dreams and stories real. Let’s play! For more Blank Canvas Living creative content services, please contact Cymbria Wood at blankcanvasliving@yahoo.ca