A Book Review

I just finished reading The Missing Alphabet: A Parents' Guide to Developing Creative Thinking in Kids. In our current educational system, creativity is typically confined to the arts. This book makes a very good argument for increasing education in creative areas to help our children succeed in the future. While reading, writing, and math are a great foundation, today's kids are surrounded by many different sense. Videos, music, and computer applications surround our kids and we need to help them understand the importance of the different areas in the sensory alphabet.

This book breaks down each of the elements and tells parents how to identify them, encourage them, and develop them. It even offers suggestions for possible career choices based on a child's sensory interests. I know I see different preferences in each of my kids and the suggestions of how to help develop these are wonderful. I also love that it's very low tech yet completely and directly translates to digital media.

The book is great at explaining how parents can incorporate each of these things at home outside of school hours. This is one of those books I'm going to save and read again when my kids are elementary age. I feel I am addressing each of these elements right now, but can see how I will need to make sure that continues as my kids get older. This book would be great for homeschoolers, but I do wish it did more to address how to do this in groups (traditional school, co-ops, camps). 

I was provided a copy of this book for free, but all opinions are my own.