Imagination is the fountain head of thought and therefore the source of words, action, personality and character. Help your child to control the whole trend of his life by carefully governing the operations of his imagination.
Dissipating the Imagination
Here is a danger point, "Day dreaming, idle flights of imagination, building air castles are of little value, and dangerous in that they tend to develop the habit." If indulged in to excess they constitute a foolish waste of time. Occasional flights of this kind should not be dealt with harshly, but any tendency to persist in them should be stopped.
Reading of books which are wild flights of imagination often constitute a harmless form of recreation for persons who are confined for long hours at routine work, or engaged in hard physical labor. Children do not need this extreme class of reading and should not be allowed to indulge in much of it.
Exercises for the Imagination
First strive for clearness in the reproduction and ability to keep the images separate. The reproduction of letters and figures in the exercises for visualization on page 46 will accomplish this result.
Problems in mental arithmetic, if visualized, are of great value in that the correct solving of them requires vivid and separate images. Work for fullness of detail, the picture frame suggested on page 74 offers an excellent opportunity to do this while exercising the constructive imagination. While fixing the attention upon the square you keep the element of change going by use of the imagination in picture making. Put into this picture all the detail possible, add everything you can think of and then strive to create still more.
The Story Games
Read the child a story or description of some well-known object, then have him tell it as nearly as he can reproduce it. Now have him tell it again and add every bit of detail, every new circumstance and condition which he can create for himself.
Read half of a story to the child and have him go on from where you leave off, making his own imaginary ending for it. Then read the conclusion to show him how the author's imagination differed from his.