Writing is a necessary skill. As parents we often struggle to find ways to help our kids learn to write for different purposes. Even kids who love to be creative and often write stories, may struggle with essay writing or book reviews. Writing does not come easily, but needs lots of practice.
Writing is a craft - the more you do it, the easier it is and the better you get at it. With that in mind, here are five ideas that will help you encourage and motivate your child to make writing a daily activity.
Write lists
Rather than write a list yourself, have your child help you. Need to buy groceries? Ask them the write down the items you need? Going on vacation? Ask them to write down the things they’d like to take and what they think they will need to bring. Going back to school? Have them write down the new school gear they’ll need. There are all kinds of situations and events that call for a list – why not get your little helper to start the lists for you?
Keep a journal
No matter how short or long the writing is, the aim is to make sure this is a daily activity. To make it more fun, you can encourage your kids to incorporate photos and memorabilia, and make little collages and illustrations to go with their daily entries.
Tell a relay story
We do this in the car when we’re all bored, everyone takes turns telling a story - sentence by sentence. Start a story with a sentence – “Once upon a time…” is a traditional way to begin with. Then have your child add a sentence to this story, then you add a sentence. These stories will often have us in fits of laughter as two (or three or four) creative minds pull the story plot in different directions. As I mentioned, we create these stories orally in the car, but it would be just as easy to push a piece of paper between the participants.
Publish that story
Encourage your kids to write a letter to the editor about a news item they have read and have an opinion on. There are magazines, such as Highlights, Seventeen and Jack and Jill, for young people that take article contributions, poems and short stories. There are also web sites that take contributions from kids, such as realkids.com, youthinkit.com and teenslant.com. NoodleTools has a great list of sources for online opportunities for young writers.
Build words
Kids need to build their vocabulary to learn to write better. Merriam-Webster has one of the best vocabulary websites for kids at wordcentral.com. The site contains a dictionary, thesaurus, word games and the ‘daily buzzword”. It’s worth a daily visit for your budding writer.
