Creative Writing Activities That Your Kids Are Sure To Love

Writing and composition are certainly troublesome subjects for many homeschool families. Nothing can invoke as much fear as the blank page and expectations. Somehow, parents telling their children to write something rarely has the desired effect, and instead of expressing themselves with the written word, children become more and more paralyzed.

Think of this for a moment, when we ask a child to write a paragraph, many skills and processes need to come together. From the physical acts of writing, spelling, and grammar, to the organization of thoughts, writing is a lot of work.

So as homeschooling parents, we need to find creative writing activities that will inject some fun into the otherwise stressful task of coaching our children in the writing process.

Five Fun and Creative Writing Activities

1. Freewriting

Freewriting isn’t necessarily a fun or silly writing activity, though it can be. However, the power of freewriting in your homeschool is found in its lack of expectations.

In practice, freewriting is just what it says, free. Freewriting is the time for your children to express their thoughts without worrying about you pulling out the red pen and finding every error.

The key is that you only read their freewriting assignment if they ask. This can be so hard for homeschool moms. We want to know how we’re doing and what spelling words we need to work on, but that isn’t the point of freewriting.

The purpose of this activity is to allow your children to get their thoughts out without second-guessing themselves and fretting over mistakes.

2. Creative Writing Games

When you think of writing, seldom does the idea of games enter your mind. But it’s true; there are games to help get the creative juices flowing from your kids.

• Rory’s Story Cubes
• Once Upon a Time
• Tall Tales Story Telling Board Game
• Tell Tale Card Game

There are many ways these can be helpful to the writing process. One is to use them as inspiration. A roll of Rory’s Story Cubes will give your child some ideas to include in their story.

Games also help your child organize their thoughts and create a coherent sequence of events that allows them to be understood. Never doubt the power of a fun game.

3. Found Poetry Project

Found poetry is a creative writing activity the entire family will love. What is found poetry?

One style is called blackout poetry. To create this type of found poetry, you first take a page from a book, magazine, or newspaper and scan it for interesting words to inspire your poem. Next, you find words that will connect and create your poem. Lastly, you black out all the words until you are left with the poem you created.

Another type of found poetry is created using a collage method much like that in art. Take those magazines and cut out all those words that grab your attention. Once you have a nice stack of words, you glue them all together to create your found poem.

This project is so creative and also frees your child from having to come up with the entire idea. It isn’t up to them to reach down and find every word or idea. They can find inspiration from the words on the page.

4. Movie or Book Review

We’ve all read the witty Amazon reviews that make us laugh, and what better way for our children to practice such essential writing skills than through writing a review.

Writing a book review to post on Amazon is so much more appealing than a book report and utilizes similar skills. In some ways, even more is required of a reviewer because they often give an opinion and need to support that opinion.

So instead of asking your child to compose a book report on their most recent book read, how about asking them to write a review. Would they recommend the book? Why or why not? It’s sure to be an interesting activity.

5. Write Directions

This activity can be a little more difficult, but it is such an important skill to cultivate. Have your child write directions as clearly as possible. Ideas include:

• How to bake a cake
• How to iron a shirt
• How to drive to the store
• How to multiply fractions (math and writing all in one!)

Giving clear how-to instructions can be very difficult, so you may even need to start with just having your child give you the directions verbally. Once they have gotten better at sequencing and using precise language, you can move to written directions.

Give it a try. The mental skills required will become a valuable tool for them to utilize in their future writing.

Use Creative Writing Activities to Lessen Writer’s Block

Many adults experience writer’s block, especially when they are staring at a blank page with a deadline on the horizon. Imagine how that feels for a child when mom is standing over their shoulder?

Paralyzing.

Remember, it is rare that an adult needs to complete a five paragraph essay, so why do we hold that as the standard for our children’s writing projects?

Use creative writing activities to widen the range of possibilities within your homeschool and help your child gain confidence as a writer.

If they have the confidence and skills to get their ideas on paper, the format becomes secondary. Just get them writing!

 

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