Entries Tagged 'Writing Games & Activities' ↓

Although it’s is one of the most necessary and helpful steps of the writing process, brainstorming can stump a reluctant writer—even if she’s using a worksheet, graphic organizer, or parent prompting.

You:    What comes to mind when you think of the beach?
Child: Sand and water.
You:    Great! What else?
Child: That’s all I can think of.

And that’s on a good day!

Prime the Pump

When students have a deep “well” of words and ideas from which to draw, their compositions becomes more vivid and concrete. That’s why WriteShop repeatedly emphasizes the need for adequate brainstorming as a routine part of the writing process. But if their well is dry and they can’t come up with enough words or ideas, their compositions will fall flat.

To keep ideas fresh and flowing, students need to prime their writing pumps on a regular basis. By practicing frequent brainstorming—especially when there’s no added pressure to write a composition—they’ll discover that they can think of words more quickly and abundantly. An activity like the Writing Well is a perfect training tool!

The Writing Well

The “Writing Well” is a freewriting exercise designed to stimulate vocabulary, ideas, and impressions on a particular topic. It makes a good pre-writing activity, but it’s really brainstorming practice in disguise!

Kept in a small notebook, these brainstorming results can also become a “seed book”—a resource, word bank, or collection of ideas—when writing future compositions.

Student Directions

1. You will find it helpful to keep your “Writing Well” in a spiral notebook for easy reference.
2. Use a separate page for each topic. You may use both front and back if you wish.
3. Before beginning, choose a topic and write it at the top of the page. Then set the timer to write for five full minutes.
4. The purpose of this exercise is to write down all the words, phrases, or sentences that come to mind about your chosen topic within the five minutes allotted.

If you get stuck, try some of these ideas:

• Picture the topic in your mind. Use your five senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell—to describe details.
• Ask yourself questions about the subject matter—who? what? when? where? why? how?
• Use a photograph or magazine picture to jog your thoughts.

At first this activity may seem difficult. You may wonder: How can I write about one thing for five whole minutes? Relax! Over time you’ll find that it has become more natural to transfer ideas from your head to your paper.

Some of these exercises will lend themselves to becoming compositions. Put a colorful star at the top of the page if you might like to develop this into a paragraph or story in the future.

Parent Tips

In the beginning, your child may have trouble writing for five full minutes. Perhaps you could set the timer for three minutes, then increase it to four, and finally to five over the course of several weeks.

If your student brainstorms very generally about a topic, you might suggest next time that she narrow her topic even further. For example, if she writes on the topic of animals, she’ll probably include a list of many kinds of animals. Next time, have her select just one of those animals (such as dogs, monkeys, or whales) and make a “Writing Well” for that subtopic, including as many details as she can.

Should your student repeatedly make lists of words only, challenge her to begin writing descriptive phrases, too. Sometimes these will be factual and sometimes experiential. For example:

If she’s writing about “red,” words and phrases might include:

• ketchup
• stop signs
• making Valentines for my family
• embers glowing in the fireplace
• fire engines
• Dorothy’s ruby slippers
• the crimson sunset on our vacation in California

If she’s writing about Grandma, phrases might include:

• baking chocolate cookies together
• lives in an apartment in Miami
• smells sweet like roses
• takes a ceramics class in her clubhouse
• silver hair
• favorite color is pink

The random list of ”red” words and phrases probably won’t ever be developed into a paragraph. On the other hand, the “Grandma” list definitely has potential to become a great descriptive composition at some point.

Writing Well Topics

Are you ready? Dip your ladle deep into the Writing Well and pull up a full, soaking draught of words and ideas. Then spill them over a fresh page—and let the writing begin. Here are some topics to get you started!

• a famous place I would like to visit
• my dream car
• gardens
• books
• animals (farm animals, jungle creatures, pets, birds, insects)
• birthdays
• the beach
• fishing
• obeying
• snow
• sounds that make me happy (nervous, afraid)
• my childhood toys
• my favorite meal
• my grandpa (or other family member)
• our pantry
• Saturdays
• things I like about myself
• heaven
• the color blue (orange, yellow, gray, green)
• things that make me feel cozy
• new uses for duct tape
• If cars could fly…
• If I had to live underwater…

Copyright © 2012 Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

. . . . .

“The Writing Well” is one of the supplemental writing activities tucked into the appendix of the Teacher’s Manual for WriteShop I and II.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Flickr. Other photos courtesy of stock.xchg. Used with permission.

It’s Thanksgiving week. Around the country, we’re picking up our turkeys, baking pies, chopping aromatic vegetables for stuffing, and setting our prettiest table.

Even still, it’s hard to forget that we’re about to careen around the corner and crash right into December—that most commercial wonderful time of the year.

Do you feel like you’re walking on the edge of a knife, trying to maintain a thankful spirit in your home during the season of the “gimmees”?

You can cultivate an attitude of gratitude in your children, and Thanksgiving week is a great time to start. When the kids begin squabbling, acting selfish, or expressing entitlement, help them do a 180 and refocus, using one of these activities as a springboard.

Thank You For…

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. ~Marcel Proust

Writing a note of appreciation for a gift received seems obvious, but it doesn’t have to stop there. Who has made an impact on your children’s lives? Provide stationery and writing tools and have your kids think of deeper reasons they can express their thanks.

• Dad. Thank him for making you feel safe and loved, for working hard for your family, for playing football in the yard, for showing you how to fix a flat on your bike, for teaching you about God, for playing Monopoly with you.
• Mom. Thank her for being your teacher, for driving you to all your activities, for cooking tasty meals for your family, for showing you how to bake a chocolate cake, for helping you become kind and compassionate, for setting a good example.
• Grandparents. Thank them for things you often take for granted, such as coming to your soccer games or school performances. Thank them for holding a special place in your life, for encouraging, supporting, and loving you.
• Sunday school teacher. Thank her for caring about you, for teaching you about Jesus, for bringing donuts each week.
• Newspaper deliverer or postman. Thank him for delivering your mail or paper every day, no matter how hot or cold or rainy or snowy. Thank him for being a dependable worker.
• Pet. Thank your dog or cat for being faithful, friendly, loyal; for being a playmate; for providing companionship, entertainment, and smiles.

It’s Been Said

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. ~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Encourage your children to copy favorite quotes about gratitude and thanksgiving and pin them to a wall or bulletin board in their room. For starters, find gratitude quotes here and here. Then, have your kids try one of these ideas:

• Copy each saying using neatest penmanship.
• Write the quote on fancy paper using calligraphy or italic handwriting.
• Type it on the computer, choose an appropriate font, enlarge the text to fill the page, and print it on pretty paper. 

Count Your Blessings

Who does not thank for little will not thank for much. ~Estonian Proverb

Mount a large sheet of posterboard on the wall of your kitchen or family room, and keep a jar of colored markers nearby. Encourage your children to write things they’re thankful for, no matter how small. Pre-writers can simply draw pictures on the posterboard.

Alternatively, make a stack of sticky notes available on which they can record their words of gratitude. Provide a centralized spot for these thankful thoughts, or simply let the kids pepper the house with notes. 

. . . . .

Gratitude is an amazing thing. It’s good for our health and well-being; it helps us choose contentment over want, self-centeredness, and entitlement; and it makes us easier to please. We can indeed be purposeful about helping our kids ditch their “me” mentality and become more others-focused.

Tomorrow I’ll share more ideas in Encouraging Thankfulness: Part 2.

~Kim

Writing activity centers are a great way to reinforce the formal composition skills you’re teaching in your curriculum. They’ll give your kids more practice writing in a fun, relaxed setting. In the last of our four-part series, you’ll find just a few more fun ideas to use during writing time.

Picture Files

Keep file folders of colorful prints, magazine pictures, and calendar photos sorted by topic: animals, people, nature, buildings, and the like. Have each child choose a picture for inspiration and write a short story based upon the picture.

Songwriting Challenge

Provide a selection of index cards with a word written on each card. Each child draws one card at a time, until all the cards are drawn. Now, each child will write a song or jingle using all the words they’ve drawn. Work out melodies and rhythms and entertain one another with a performance!

Now Hiring!

Provide sample résumés for this writing activity center. Allow your children time to study the résumés for ideas and formats. Here’s one to get you started, but you can find many other examples online by doing a Google search.

Have your kids put together a résumé of their lives. What should be included? What jobs might they be interested in, now and in the future? What information would they want their future employers to know? Remind the children to consider those questions as they write their résumés.

Noun Safari

Keep available a selection of magazines, glue sticks or tape, construction paper, and scissors. Ask children to look through the magazines, searching for nouns. Cut out the nouns and glue them to construction paper. Later, select a noun from one of the noun pages, and use that specific noun as the basis for a story.

Related Posts: Writing Activity Centers: Part 1, Writing Activity Centers: Part 2, Writing Activity Centers: Part 3

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a regular contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.

Creative Commons photo by Art G. courtesy of Flickr. Used with permission.

Writing activity centers are a great way to reinforce the formal composition skills you’re teaching in your curriculum. They’ll give your kids more practice writing in a fun, relaxed setting. Today’s post, the third in our series, offers more great ideas for inspiring your young writers.

Rain Forest Review

Collect a basket of items related to the world’s rain forests: nonfiction books, magazines, posters, and advocacy materials. Have the children read and browse through these materials, learning more about the importance of rainforests. Ask each child to write a simple paragraph or two about their discoveries, complete with illustrations, and share their knowledge with family members.

It’s a Wonderful Life!

Provide small construction paper booklets. On each page, have younger children draw pictures of the very special events in their lives. Ask them to write a few sentences to accompany each picture.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Fill a basket or box with recent local and national newspapers. Read through a number of articles together for ideas on the content and format of news stories. Provide newsprint, colored pencils, and colored paper. With your children, create a family newspaper. Mail it to Grandma!

Vocabulary Web Contests

In the middle of a large sheet of paper, write a single noun, accompanied by an illustration. On the paper, each child takes turns writing down words that describe or are associated with the noun. For example, the word in the middle might be strawberry. Children would add words to the poster like tasty, red, squishy, snack, fruit, sweet, soft, or ice cream. The more words, the better!

Reader’s Theater

Provide a number of reader’s theater scripts for your children to read aloud, practicing oral expression and fluency. Choose a favorite script and continue the further adventures of the characters, writing the next act. For free scripts and ideas, start here:

• Reader’s Theater Scripts and Plays
• The Reading Lady – Dozens of downloadable scripts
• Reader’s Theater Tips and Scripts

Literary Journals

Encourage regular independent reading of novels and small chapter books. set aside a day each week to write and draw in special journals about the books your kids have chosen for “fun” reading.

Sell the Sequel!

Plan, draft, and write a sequel to a favorite novel. Which characters will appear in the sequel? What’s the new plot?

Related Posts: Writing Activity Centers: Part 1, Writing Activity Centers, Part 2

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a regular contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.

Writing activity centers are a great way to reinforce the formal composition skills you’re teaching in your curriculum. They’ll give your kids more practice writing in a fun, relaxed setting. Here’s the second post in our four-part series.

Clay Creatures

Mold and sculpt figurines from modeling clay or dough. When they’re finished, write five words or phrases describing the figures.

Family Poetry Jam

Place books of poetry in a basket for examples and inspiration. Supply paper, pencils, and colored markers for your children to write poems about family members, topics of study, or any subject they wish. Use other poems as a guide or invent new formats. When finished, dim the lights, spread out comfortable pillows on the floor, and host a poetry reading. Serve milk and cookies!

[Kim says: Looking for a great poetry resource? The Random House Book of Poetry for Children has been our family's favorite. Compiled by Jack Prelutsky, this anthology is a delightful collection of both classic and contemporary poems children love. My own well loved copy has literally fallen apart!]

The Further Adventures of…

Collect a set of picture books with interesting, appealing characters. Read a book aloud, and then continue the story on paper, with additional adventures of a favorite character. Create imaginary illustrations and colorful covers for these new tales.

Order, Order, Please!

Provide envelopes of pre-written sentence strips, each envelope containing the lines of a familiar poem. Have the kids work together to read the sentences and figure out the correct sequence of each poem. Provide copies of the poems for the kids to check their efforts.

Pasta Punctuation

Each child writes sentences on construction paper. Using a variety of pasta shapes such as elbow macaroni, orzo, and linguini, have the kids glue on the “punctuation” where necessary. The children should incorporate all the punctuation marks they’ve been taught to this point: periods, question marks, commas, quotation marks, exclamation marks, and/or apostrophes.

How Do You Do It?

Ask your children to think of experiences they’ve had in which they’ve learned to do something all by themselves. Perhaps it was the first time they rode a bike without training wheels, learned to tie their shoes, or did the laundry on their own. Ask them to write a set of directions teaching someone else how to do this specific action. Illustrate the directions to provide more details. Then, have each child “teach” another child using his or her instructional page.

“I’m Thinking of…”

Each child writes a very specific description of an object nearby, whether in the living room, kitchen, etc., without actually naming the object itself. When finished, read the descriptions aloud and see who can identify the items described.

Related Post: Writing Activity Centers: Part 1, Writing Activity Centers: Part 3

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a regular contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.

Writing activity centers are a great way to reinforce the formal composition skills you’re teaching in your curriculum. They’ll give your kids more practice writing in a fun, relaxed setting. Whether you create a basket of materials by the sofa or a stand alone writing desk in the family room, try these different learning center ideas.

Picture Book Mail

Place a collection of favorite picture books in a basket. Ask your child to read one or more of the books and then write a letter to one of the characters. What could she say in the letter? When finished, have your child place her letter in a decorated envelope, with a sticker for a stamp. Later, you can respond to the letter as the character your child wrote to!

“And Now, a Word From Our Sponsors”

Gather a variety of household items and place them in a box or basket. Ask each child to write out advertising copy and create a poster for a product. Why would folks want to buy this item? Remember to keep colored markers and construction paper close at hand, and encourage your kids to do rough drafts and sketches before they begin.

Character Diaries

At this center, have your children create the imaginary diaries of favorite characters from books or novels they’re reading. Design your own diaries or buy inexpensive ones from the store.

Round Robin Stories

Make available a timer and plenty of paper and pencils. Have each child begin to write a story based upon the same pre-selected prompt. (Visit Creative Writing Prompts for ideas, or use WriteShop StoryBuilders.) Set the timer for three minutes.

When finished, have the children exchange stories. Set the timer again for three minutes, and have each child begin adding to the story he or she just received. Write until the timer ends, and exchange papers again. Continue in this manner for several rounds of exchanging papers and adding content to everyone’s stories.

Let the original owner of each story read the resulting tale aloud, and enjoy the hilarity!

Silly Sentences

Ask each child to write a set number of sentences, some factual and some outright ridiculous.

• A factual sentence might be: Cheetahs are the fastest land mammals.
• A silly sentence might be: Cheetahs drive sports cars.

Remind kids to use correct capitalization and punctuation. When finished, have kids share their sentences with each other. Which are true? Which are false?

Self Portraits in Words

Using mirrors as guides, have your children draw pictures of themselves. Then ask your children how they would define themselves in words. What describing words would they use? Write those words on the paper, surrounding the self-portrait.

Family Portraits

Draw or paint portraits of each family member, including all the pets! Bind the pages together with a hole punch and yarn. Under the portrait, write a short one-paragraph description about each family member. Include information about characteristics, talents and interests, favorite activities, and more.

Related Post: Writing Activity Centers: Part 2

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a regular contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.

We’ve all experienced it. The blank page seems more foe than friend, whether we’re the ones facing that expanse of white or whether we’re encouraging our children to blast through writer’s block.

Sometimes oral descriptions can pave the way to written descriptions, gently opening kids to their own creativity. Try the following thinking game the next time your young ones protest, ”But I don’t know what to say!”

See how many answers each child can think of for each item below. Keep an informal score for a friendly competition.

1.) Describe one thing you might see in a…

• refrigerator
• living room
• closet
• car

2.) Describe two things you might find…

• at the library
• in a craft-supply store
• on the playground
• at an amusement park

3.) Describe something you see…

• in the autumn
• in the winter
• at the beach
• in a restaurant

4.) Describe something you might wear…

• in a rainstorm
• to a costume party
• on a snowy day
• to play a sport

Now, have your children choose one of their oral responses and elaborate upon it in written words.

“Writer’s block? What writer’s block?” you’ll be mumbling to yourself, as the kids scribble away!

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a regular contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.

Has the boredom bug bitten your brood? Are you looking for a few ways to keep your kids writing while school’s out? Try these ideas for some summer writing fun.

1. Snapshot Storyboard

Take pictures of your child engaged in a fun activity such as swimming, making a craft, or climbing a tree. Print out the photos and have your child glue them on paper. Beneath each photo, your child can write a caption or sentence that explains what she’s doing (“I had so much fun sliding into the pool”) or adds an interjection (“Splash!”). Pre-writers can dictate their ideas to you while you write them down.

2. The Story within the Painting

With your children and teens, look through an art book, visit an art museum, or browse an online art collection such as the one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In particular, look for a painting that seems to tell a story. Once they find one they especially love, have them brainstorm a list of words, phrases, or ideas that the painting suggests. Then invite them to write a story that imagines what’s happening in the picture.

3. Best Memories

Sort through family photos with your children and have them choose a favorite that has lots of good memories associated with it. Invite them to write a story, reflection, or journal about the photo, focusing as much as possible on the sensory details—sights, sounds, smells, flavors, and textures—that made the day or event so meaningful.

4. New Endings

Gather a few picture books and read them aloud together—but don’t read the last few pages that reveal the ending. Instead, have the children write new endings. Pre-writers can dictate their ideas to you while you write them down. If your child is familiar with the story and can’t seem to think of new ways to end it, try reading a book that’s new to him. After he writes a new ending, compare the two versions over cookies and milk.

Older children and motivated writers might enjoy writing a new final chapter to a favorite novel.

5. Travel Brochure

Are you taking a vacation this summer? Have your children and teens design a travel brochure that highlights a favorite city, tourist spot, or other destination. Encourage them to use photos, illustrations, and maps. Make sure they include text to write details about the highlights or features of the place. What a great lasting souvenir!

Copyright 2011 © Kim Kautzer. All rights reserved.

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.

Sultry spring breezes drifted through the open windows, swaying the blinds, teasing our noses with the perfume of honeysuckle and wild roses. It was hard to maintain concentration on American constitutional history. Competing for attention, the open textbooks on our desks lost to the wide-open world outside.

“Hey, Mrs. Wagner! Can we go outdoors and play the “Looks Like” game?” one student pleaded. He was joined by a chorus of “Please?”

“Sounds good to me!” I don’t know of any human being immune to the southern springtime scent of honeysuckle and wild roses.

Playing the “Looks Like” Game

The “Looks Like” game was a favorite metaphor exercise. Kids played the game everywhere: on the bus, in the classroom, and always outdoors. A quick method of jumping into creative images, it freed imaginations even within my most self-proclaimed “unimaginative’ kids.

We grabbed notebooks and pens, scattering into small groups.

Clouds drifted, veiling the sun, then rolled on again. “The sun looks like a puppy wrestling with the laundry,” a child wrote.

Leaves rustled against an azure sky. Another student jotted, “The trees look like feather dusters, cleaning the clouds.”

Dogwood petals and honey locust blossoms scattered across the fields. “The blossoms look like sprinkled soap powder,” penned a young lady.

Back inside our classroom, the kids’ metaphors birthed the images of a new group poem:

Spring Cleaning

The sun hides in a basket of clouds,
                 a puppy playing in the laundry.
Trees dust the sky,
                sprinkling soap powder blossoms
                over the earth’s green carpet.

As the kids demonstrated that day, we naturally see things metaphorically. We constantly compare the way one thing looks to another. Comparison is custom-built into our language. Writing a poem can be as simple as bringing images together through metaphor and simile.

Today with your children, grab pen and paper and play the “Looks Like” game.

What do you see around you? Focus on details and write down:

• I see __________
• It looks like __________
• I see __________
• It looks like __________

Keep going!

What shared poem will you and your kids write together today to mark a wonderful day of living? Post your poems here in our comment section!

You might also enjoy:

• Writing a poem of comparison
• Spring poetry ideas

. . . . .

Janet Wagner is a contributor to In Our Write Minds. For over two decades, Janet was an elementary and middle school teacher in two Christian academies, a public district school, and a public charter school. She also had the honor of helping to homeschool her two nieces. Janet and her husband Dean live on the family farm in the Piedmont region of north central North Carolina. Currently, she enjoys a flexible life of homemaking, volunteering, reading, writing, tutoring students and training dogs, and learning how to build websites. You can view her web work-in-progress at www.creative-writing-ideas-and-activities.com.