Well, maybe it’s not THAT serious, but I do love Pinterest. It’s simply the best way to keep online recipes, photos, tips, and craft ideas categorized—even the ones I think I’ll never actually get around to using!

In addition to pinning salad recipes, organizational tips, and ideas for a future kitchen remodel, I’ve been collecting writing ideas, too. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Paint Chip Contractions

Who knew you could have so much fun with paint chips? This Paint Chip Contractions activity will help your kids practice forming contractions.

2. Boggle

Isn’t this the most fun? It’s a Printable Boggle Board! Boggle makes an outstanding pre-writing game for all ages, from elementary through high school. It’s a great way to dust off the cobwebs and get ready for writing time.

3. Paint Chip Synonym Garden

Use colorful paint chips in graduated hues to make a Paint Chip Synonym Garden. It’s a hands-on vocabulary-building tool that keeps dull or repeated words at a minimum. This is ideal for middle-schoolers, but you can certainly use it with younger students as well.

4. Traffic Light Transitions

Make a Traffic Light Transitions poster. This terrific visual will remind children to use transition words to connect sentences and paragraphs.

5. Journal Jar

Journaling is another way to loosen stuck thoughts and ideas. Make this cute Journal Jar, which includes a link to colorful, printable topics you can cut out and add to the jar. Children will have fun picking out topics, whether you do daily, bi-weekly, or weekly journaling. For added fun, let them give input about what they’d like to write about!

6. Venn Diagrams

When teaching children to compare and contrast, a Venn diagram is a useful tool. And when you add a kinesthetic dimension for your hands-on learners, it’s even better! Here’s a Paper Plate Venn Diagram that’s been used to compare and contrast two different versions of “The Princess and the Pea.” You can really run with this idea in so many ways!

7. Writing a Strong Lead

Students of all ages can struggle with how to introduce a topic or start a story. I love this free printable poster I found through Pinterest: What Makes an Effective Lead?

8. Lists

I’ve long been an advocate of list-making, so I especially love this link to a great resource for printable lists, including book lists, lists of descriptive adjectives, and this list of strong verbs. Watch your children’s vocabulary soar!

Have you been bitten by the Pinterest bug? Leave your link in the comments and I’ll be happy to follow you!

It’s a Party . . . and You’re Invited!

Maggie Hogan and Bright Ideas Press are hosting a HUGE party—and you’re invited! Have you attended a FaceBook party yet? I’ll be one of the guest “speakers” sharing tips for teaching reluctant writers.

Here’s the scoop: Go to Facebook and *like* Bright Ideas Press (BIP). Then, come to the party this afternoon at the BIP page and get ready to share, learn, and win prizes—literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of prizes!

Plus, there will be “speakers” available to answer your questions on different topics. Meet Kim Kautzer of WriteShop (that’s me!), Felice Gerwitz of Media Angels, Sharra Badgley of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine, and Dari Mullins from Illuminations.

What: Bright Ideas Press Facebook Party
Date: Mon. June 27
Time: 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. EDT
Place: Bright Ideas Press Facebook page

Throughout the evening you’ll have opportunities to win great products from Heart of the Matter Online, WriteShop, Media Angels, Raising Real Men, The Old Schoolhouse, My Audio School, Trivium Pursuit, Knowledge Box Central, and of course Bright Ideas Press! (And everyone who stops by gets a FREE Literature Study Guide and a free Family Bible Study on Ruth!) The two grand prizes include TWO free copies of WonderMaps and Illuminations!

Introducing Tip Talk Time

One of the cool things about this FB Party is a chance to learn, connect, and get your questions answered! Each of the three scheduled speakers has a specific 15-minute time slot, and you get a chance to “ask the experts” your questions! This is how “Tip Talks” will work:

1. The speaker will post a tip.
2. She’ll then allow for comments and questions under her post.
3. She’ll answer as many questions as she can, and then . . .
4. She’ll move on to post a brand-new tip.
5. Rinse and Repeat.

TIP TALKS Schedule

5:30 PM EDT
Speaker: Kim Kautzer (WriteShop) – www.writeshop.com
Title: Tips for Teaching a Reluctant Writer

Kim will share some practical ideas to help your struggling student find more joy and success in writing. Learn how to inspire confidence, strengthen skills, and add a bit of fun to writing time!

6:15 PM EDT
Speaker: Felice Gerwitz – www.mediaangels.com
Title: Parent-Child Relationships with Your Homeschoolers

Most homeschoolers wear many hats…mommy, teacher, and disciplinarian. We love our kids, and they love us, but sometimes relationships in such close proximity can cause havoc within our homes! Felice is a long-time homeschool mom to five very different children. Join her for a session of Q and A about kids, how to engage them, and how to have lasting relationships.

7:00 PM EDT
Speaker: Dari Mullins – http://illuminations.brightideaspress.com
Title: Answering Your Questions about Illuminations

If you use (or are considering using) The Mystery of History or All American History, you might be interested in Illuminations. Illuminations includes dozens of fabulous literature study guides and much, much more to go with these two history series–including WriteShop!

FYI – even if a particular TIP TALK is not for you, there will be plenty of other partying going on simultaneously! Buckle up – this will be FAST!

To attend the party, simply “like” the Bright Ideas Press FB page. See you there!

Sometimes it’s hard to get started in the morning.

It’s like that with any job, not just writing, but when it comes specifically to writing, how do you get the words and ideas flowing?

Writing doesn’t always begin with a blank page or fingers poised above a keyboard. As a matter of fact, before your child ever writes a word, consider starting off your writing session with a pre-writing activity or warm-up. You can use pre-writing exercises to:

1. Stimulate Thinking

“Just as you would stretch before you go running, you need to warm up before you start writing…. [Pre-writing] exercises …help you stretch your mind.” –Jack Prelutsky, poet

Try these writing warm-ups!

2. Help Kids Overcome Writer’s Block

“Starting with a writing warm-up can get the creative juices flowing, and help you bypass your critical mind that keeps you frozen and staring at a blank page. You can make up your own warm-ups by using prompts, questions, observations that you might keep in a notebook…

“Or you can get your warm-ups from someone else, using books or ‘flash card’ decks designed just for that purpose. Open a page, pick out a warm-up randomly, write it at the top of your journal or notebook page, and start writing.” –Jamie S. Walters, Ivy Sea

Try these printable card decks!

3. Put Aside Distractions and Focus on Writing

Pre-writing activities “aren’t meant to provoke publishable work. They’re meant to get … your brain warmed up and your ideas flowing….

“Put time limits on them if you have trouble stopping. When the time is up, dive straight into your ‘real’ writing no matter where you are, even if you’re in the middle of a sentence.”  –Heather Grove, freelance writer

Try these creative writing prompts!

4. Increase Vocabulary

“Play with sounds and words to discover something new about language and our world. By playing with the order and arrangement of words, repetition, connection, and word choice, we begin to learn how language works….

“By playing with words we often discover new ways of saying old things—we see with new eyes and create a new world that we had not recognized before.” –Andrew Green, former English teacher and author of Potato Hill Poetry

Try these writing warm-ups!

And here are a few more writing games and activities to play:

• Sentence-building games
• Picture books as pre-writing activities
• What’s in the Bag?
• Boardless Scrabble?

. . . . .

“What’s in the Bag?,” sentence-building games, and picture books are some of the many pre-writing activities and writing games tucked into the pages of WriteShop and WriteShop Primary.

Listen, we’re going to let you guys in on a little secret: You can really put your commas anywhere. Grammar’s all a big sham.

Intrigued? So was I!

My friend Mary Jo Tate pointed me in the direction of this amusing look at the evolution (and deterioration) of grammar and punctuation. Enjoy the chuckle!

Grammar’s Dirty Little Secret

It may not sound like your idea of fun, but if you have a reluctant writer, I can fairly guarantee that he’d rather make a PowerPoint presentation than write a report by hand. As a matter of fact, allowing your child to display his understanding of a subject in a fresh new way can spark tremendous enthusiasm and eagerness.

Creating a PowerPoint presentation appeals to children on so many levels:

• Perfect for both visual and kinesthetic learners.
• Appeals to children who are artistic and creative.
• Appeals to children who love technology.
• Offers a break from more traditional schoolwork.
• Teaches important computer and keyboarding skills.
• Encourages research.

Children can use a Microsoft® PowerPoint slide show to explain a scientific concept such as photosynthesis, volcanoes, or the water cycle. They can create reports about penguins, submarines, ancient Greece, ballet, or Dwight D. Eisenhower. Adding photos, clipart, and tidbits of information in bullet-point form, they’re absorbing and applying knowledge. It’s fun, creative, novel, and interesting, making the PowerPoint a great way to mix up traditional report writing with technology.

With a few months of the school year still remaining, perhaps the time is right to try something new. Why not introduce your children to PowerPoint? For some basic tutorials, start here:

• Free Microsoft course: Create your first presentation
• Using PowerPoint for Mac
• eHow PowerPoint tutorial for kids
• PowerPoint resources

Ryan Fontana joins us today as a guest blogger here at In Our Write Minds. Ryan, who blogs for ecollegefinder.org, shares some great app finds for techno-savvy homeschoolers.

In the past, distance education was primarily referred to as homeschooling. With the recent trend of students enrolling in online colleges and universities, the term is now widely used and can have many different interpretations.  

While homeschooling for elementary education and telecommuting for an online bachelor’s degree are in stark contrast, the use of technology and applications (apps) are critical to the success of any student planning to engage in distance learning.

The following applications can be found in the Apple iTunes store.  While these are paid apps, the fee is small, and the benefit well exceeds the price.

1. Story­ Builder: By the use of audio clips, children can expect to improve their paragraph formation as well as integration of ideas.  A great tool to build a child’s communication skills.

2. Sentence Builder: Three levels of play and 100 distinct pictures allow elementary students to build grammatically correct sentences.

3. Question Builder: With 1,200 audio clip questions and answers, this app helps students to build inference skills by answering abstract questions.

4. Grammar Prep: Directed toward working professionals (AKA the working homeschool teacher). Use these apps to freshen up on your own grammar skills.

5. Flashcards Deluxe: Flashcards have always been a popular tool for reading and writing. This simplifies the process of combining pictures, information and sound together. Stop wasting paper and go green with this app.

6. SpellDown Spelling Bee: A simple way to put together a fun and challenging spelling bee. With the ability to record audio, this app is a great way to add a new element to the traditional test.

7. ABA Problem Solving Game – What Rhymes?:  Strengthen your young child’s foundation for reading comprehension by practicing rhyming games that offer both visual and audio exercises.  Students are shown four objects and asked which two rhyme.

8. Forvo Pronunciation: Listen and learn pronunciations of words from over 250 languages.

9. Word of the Day: A great way to kick off each lesson. This fun and simple app offers a new word and its meaning every day.

10. ABA Receptive Identification: Boost your child’s conversation skills with this app that helps to receptively identify the feature, function and class of items, people and places.

. . . . .

Ryan Fontana blogs about the latest topics and trends regarding accredited online colleges and universities. Visit their blog to learn more about Bachelor’s, Master’s, and online PhD programs.

Do your older children have a hard time thinking of what to give a younger sibling for a birthday or Christmas gift? Why not encourage them to create a scrapbook-style (or digital) alphabet book for a fun writing project with a real purpose?

Making an ABC Book

Directions

1.  Gather stickers, die cuts, and pictures. Keep in mind that young children love bright colors. Collect pictures from old magazines, catalogs, greeting cards, and calendars as well as photos of familiar faces and objects.

For a digital ABC book, go through your own digital photos, encourage your older child to take some new ones, and look for free images online at sites such as StockXchng.

Make the book as personalized as possible by including pictures of things the child knows and loves. Use these categories as starting points:

• Family members and pets
• Foods, snacks, meals, and drinks
• Familiar household objects and furniture
• Familiar places (park, zoo, yard, store, fair)
• Animals
• Vehicles
• Facial expressions (happy, sad, mad)
• Articles of clothing
• Toys
• Colors
• Seasonal words, holidays, and activities
• Action words (jump, sleep, dig)

2. Using alphabet stickers or neat printing, label solid-color sheets of 8.5- x 11-inch scrapbooking paper with each letter of the alphabet, one letter per page. If possible, include both upper- and lower-case letters.

3. Glue pictures and photos to the appropriate page.

4. Neatly label each picture. Encourage older children to also write a sentence or poem using several of the words on that page.

5. When dry, insert pages into page-protector sleeves and place into a slim 3-ring binder.

Don’t you just love this creative, personal gift idea? So will the young recipient! Get your older child on board, warm up those crafting muscles, and let the fun begin! And if you prefer to go the digital route, check out some of the resources below.

Resources, Ideas, and Tips

ABC word lists

• Sample ABC Word List
• More ABC Word Lists
• In Our Write Minds seasonal word banks

ABC scrapbooking ideas

• How to Make an ABC Book – Specific to Your Child
• Making an Alphabet Book: Kodak Project Center

Digital scrapbooking resources

• Make a Digital ABC Book - If you want to use digital photos only
• Shutterfly – Print a hard or softcover digital ABC book.
• Artscow – Another resource for digital books.

Artscow BONUS! Get 6 FREE 20-page 8×8 books and 2 FREE 39-page 8×8 books. Coupon Code 888BKS4U. Add to cart by 11/8/10. Then you have 30 days to complete your projects!

IT’S HERE! NaNoWriMo starts TODAY!

Short for National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo is an amazing writing event that takes place every November.

I love that NaNoWriMo also has a Young Writers Program that’s open to children 17 and under. The challenge? Pump out a novel in 30 days.

According to the website, “The only thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The high-velocity approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

Free Resources

NaNoWriMo offers some great resources to help your students along their writing journey—”new and improved, 100% awesome, non-lame” Young Novelist Workbooks.

You can download the workbooks here absolutely FREE! Choose from:

• Elementary Student Noveling Workbook
• Middle School Student Noveling Workbook
• High School Student Noveling Workbook

Ready for a crazy, roller-coaster November? Register here for the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program!

. . . . .

Reprinted from the archives.

But the truth is that few children are motivated by the sheer love of writing. So—short of paying them off with cash or candy—what can you do to inspire them?

Writers Need an Audience

Having an audience takes your child past the point of writing for a “requirement” or a grade—and it certainly takes him beyond writing just for his normal, everyday audience of one: you.

Importance of an Audience

You can spark renewed interest in writing by guiding your child to think of ways to broaden his understanding of what an audience can be. Help him experience how others can find pleasure in reading his work. He’ll be rewarded with increased joy and confidence, and I think you’ll begin to see his writing blossom as he takes more pride in his efforts.

Seeing Their Works in Print

When I taught writing classes years ago, we always ended the year with a Writers’ Tea. Our students invited friends and family, dressed up for the occasion,and recited poetry. At the end, we passed out class anthologies featuring samples of each student’s best writing.

As they pored over the stories and poems in the spiral-bound booklets, it was clear how much the children enjoyed seeing their works in print and sharing the anthologies with their parents and grandparents.

Thinking Outside the Box

An anthology is just one of many ways to publish. Below are some other suggestions for expanding your kids’ writing audience or showcasing their writing through their published projects. When they polish a story or poem so that it’s the best it can be—and when they go beyond the traditional “final draft” to create an interesting published project—they’ll be much more likely to write for the joy of it. Here are some ideas:

Publishing Stories

• Shape Books: Cut out shapes that match the story’s theme (e.g., house, car, seashell or animal shape). Use cardboard or heavy cardstock for the top and bottom cover and grade-level lined paper for the pages. Staple edges, or lace the pages together with yarn.
• Puzzle: Glue a photocopy of the child’s story to a piece of cardstock. On the back, have her draw a picture about the story. Cut the cardstock into 8 or 9 simple puzzle pieces that a friend or family member can assemble.
• Board Game: Suggest that your child create a board game about his story. Play the game with the family.
• Journaling Notebook: Assemble your child’s journal pages into a special notebook.
• Cards and Letters: Help your child create a card on the computer. Or provide her with scrapbooking papers, punches, stickers, and other supplies so that she can make a fancy card for publishing her friendly letter or invitation letter.
• Comedy Night: Have your child write & illustrate funny story. Host a special family Comedy Night. Start by having your young author share her humorous story. Then choose a funny cartoon to watch or a stack of silly books to read. Invite everyone to tell their favorite jokes.
• Suitcase Story: For a story about a travel or vacation experience, make a suitcase out of a 12- x 18-inch piece of brown construction paper. Fold the paper in half and round the corners with scissors. Cut two handles from yellow or tan paper and tape them in place. Staple the child’s final story inside the suitcase.

Publishing Factual Reports and Book Reports

• Lapbooks and Flap Books: These make great avenues for displaying facts, photos, drawings, and short reports. They work well for factual reports as well as for explaining the steps of a process. Here’s just one of many lapbooking websites to help get you started.
• Mobiles: Mobiles are a fun way to publish a report or book report! You can attach index cards or paper shapes to a length of string or yarn and hang them from a coat hanger or the rim of a paper plate. On one side of each card, have the child write facts about his topic or details about a book’s characters, setting, or action. On the back, he can illustrate.
• Trivia Game: This is a great way to publish a younger child’s short factual report. On the cover of a manila file folder, have the child write five questions about her topic and then staple the report inside. Let family members or friends try to guess the answers. Then they can open the folder and read the report to see if they were right!

.  .  .  .  .

Most of these fun and creative activities come straight from the pages of WriteShop Primary and WriteShop Junior, two elementary writing programs that incorporate clever publishing ideas into every lesson.

This little article is a gem. Who knew Twitter could help you improve your writing skills?