Writing projects can be a fun thing for a family to do together. Writing skills are something that schools test for and emphasize these days. My boys are all supposed to keep journals for school. They also have to write papers, book reports, essays and short stories. Here’s a few ways to help writing time be fun.
Sometimes coming up with the ideas for stories is the hardest part. I like to use story dice. You can either build your own paper dice, or put stickers on extra dice. On each side of the dice the kids can write people, places, or things they are interested in. Space. Snow Leopards. Santa Claus. New York. On another dice they write motions like jumped, ran, or flew. On another they write descriptive words like pretty, red, or huge.
Kids love to roll these story dice. Somehow having the dice tell them what to write about frees up writing anxiety. They may end up writing about purple penguins flying around New York, or rainbow colored snow leopards visiting the beach. If the kids are old enough you can explain about parts of speech like nouns and verbs and adjectives. If you don’t have dice, you can always write the words on strips on paper and pull them from a bag. My children don’t always end up writing about exactly what the dice say. And that’s okay. The point of the dice is to prompt them to thing of things they would like to write about and to get them writing.
Another way to make writing more fun is to provide pens with different ink colors, markers for illustrating, and colored paper.
I like to write the date on their stories and save them. For very young kids I sometimes write a translation if their spelling or handwriting will make it hard to read in the future. It’s fun to bring out their stories sometimes and read to the boys. The teacher part of me knows that writing is important for learning, for spelling and grammar, for vocabulary and organization of ideas. But the mom part of me just likes to be charmed by their fun ideas and creativity.
More Ideas for Writing:
Insane Writing Prompts