Innovative tools that spark creativity in kids... and their parents!

The family planner is the ultimate tool for learning to get organized as a family! Like all Les Belles Combines tools, it's also a great excuse to spark children's creativity! The little space set aside for the “Word of the Week” is actually a great way to do just that. At our house, we like to write in a new vocabulary word or a well-known expression and challenge our kids to use it in a conversation sometime during the week. When they pull it off, we reward them with a token for the General Store! That's how our six-year-old Louis ended up using the expression “It's like looking for a needle in a haystack” while hunting for his yo-yo in our completely messy playroom! A child who has a good vocabulary and knows how to use it properly has a much easier time expressing their ideas.

Another way to spark their inventiveness is to invite them to come up with their own little missions to accomplish throughout the week: a good deed, a personal challenge, a household chore... That way, your child will learn to spot the little things they need to work on and to push themselves.

The General Store

The General Store, our positive-reinforcement superstore, is the best way to encourage children's good deeds. When you use it, you give your kids little challenges so they pitch in more in family life. To encourage their creative side, why not ask them every now and then to come up with their own ideas for how they could help out more in family life? You'll be surprised to see how creative your kids get to earn the reward they want so badly. They'll find a ton of good deeds to do to collect the tokens they need for that reward, or they'll try out different math equations with their brothers and sisters to pool their tokens and buy a privilege or a bigger reward together. That's how Laurier and Simone pooled their tokens to get the new puzzle in the “20 tokens” section of our store: a great way to learn to count and solve problems at the same time!

The Cool-Down Kit is a wonderful tool when it comes to teaching our kids to manage their emotions. Invite your children to get creative and find ways to help themselves calm down. My son decided to put a little box of Lego in our kit. Simone, for her part, discovered that drawing helped her calm down, so we added a few sheets of paper and some colouring pencils for her.

The kit also includes a series of ways to make amends, so we can make up for something hurtful we did to someone. Several are suggested, but a few tickets have been left blank so you can personalize them. Why not invite your child to use their imagination and come up with new ways to make up for a blunder?

In the end, you'll be surprised to see how much Les Belles Combines tools push you to become creative parents yourselves!