Entries Tagged 'Writing Games & Activities' ↓

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

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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.

This is a tale of two moms.

Cheryl’s son has motivational issues, so she likes to help him approach a concept in many different ways. “If one activity doesn’t cement the idea, another will,” she says. She loves when a curriculum appeals to different learning styles by offering activities that appeal to her hands-on, kinesthetic child.

Jennifer looks for books and materials that just teach writing. She doesn’t want pre-writing activities, games, craft projects, or other “bells and whistles.” To Jennifer, these things are busy work. “I just want to teach my kids how to write,” she says. “I’ll play games another time.”

What Is Busy Work?

bu · sy work n. useless tasks or assignments that appear productive, but merely occupy students.

I remember busy work—inane worksheets my teachers passed out as a dubious reward for those of us who followed directions and finished our in-class assignments on time.

We didn’t get to read a book or play a quiet game in the back of the room. No, our promptness and diligence were punished, in essence, with silly coloring pages and fill-in-the-blank worksheets that kept us quiet while everyone else slogged along.

Sadly, Jennifer lumps word games and craft-based publishing ideas with busy work. She thinks they’re unnecessary and time-consuming.

But my own experience with real busy work reminds me that pushing a pencil around a worksheet is worlds apart from using educational games and other creative activities to enhance learning.

Enhanced Learning

Are you, like Jennifer, tempted to think of such activities as busy work? If so, consider their importance in light of the way most young children learn.

Pre-writing Activities

Manipulatives and pre-writing activities are vital, engaging learning aids, unlike those tedious workbooks meant to keep children out of your hair for an hour.

Educational methods such as spelling or vocabulary games help a child’s brain remember new concepts. They teach him about important story elements and help him discover fresh new ways to practice writing skills. Such activities especially benefit young—and usually kinesthetic—learners.

Learning games can teach a child skills such as:

• Adding description
• Developing voice
• Planning a mystery
• Adding details to a story
• Expanding writing vocabulary
• Thinking about story elements such as setting and character
• Summarizing a book

Crafty Publishing Projects

One of the most encouraging and rewarding experiences for any author is to see his work published. Most children love publishing their stories through a fun, imaginative activity.

Not only does this enhance the writing experience, but they end up with a really creative final draft they’re eager to share with others.

Your child can publish his writing project in many ways. For example, he can:

• Create a Top Secret File for his mystery story.
• Make a travel poster or paper “suitcase” for his adventure story.
• Present his report on a three-panel display board.
• Make a decorative invitation or thank-you letter.
• Design a lift-the-flap book or trivia game for an informative report.

The Craft Caveat

Like most young children, Cheryl’s son loves to combine writing and art to create his own “published work.” Your child, however, may not like craft projects as much. Or perhaps you’re not a crafty person and would rather bypass the hands-on activities because they’re not your style.

Either way, it’s still important to encourage your child to produce a final draft because it reinforces the concept of editing and revising. So whether your child creates a crafty masterpiece or simply rewrites his final draft on fresh paper in his best penmanship, remember that the final draft is as much a part of the writing process as brainstorming and writing.

The quickest, easiest way to display your child’s story is to affix it to a slightly larger sheet of colored construction paper. The construction paper forms a simple mat that gives the final draft a polished, published look and reminds your student that he did his best.

Writing = Fun!

You want your child to associate writing with fun, and you want his brain to be stimulated in as many ways as possible through tactile and sensory experiences. So if your writing program offers crafty or game-focused writing activities, take the time to make the suggested props, even if it feels like busy work to you. Most children love using them—and they don’t even realize they’re learning!

. . . . .

WriteShop Primary and WriteShop Junior use creative, hands-on activities to teach and review elementary-age writing skills.

WriteShop Primary is currently available in three levels: Book A, Book B, and Book C. WriteShop Junior Book D will be published in Spring 2011. To be among the first to get the scoop about the book’s release, join our mailing list by visiting www.writeshop.com and looking for the newsletter sign-up box

Who says teaching writing skills to children has to be dull and rote? In truth, much learning happens when you infuse writing time with creativity, fun, and games!

You can help your child practice adding details to the middle of a story by playing a variation of hopscotch together. While a great activity for any child, it’s especially effective for active, kinesthetic learners.

Advance Prep

1. Draw a hopscotch grid on the sidewalk or patio, making each square big enough for your child’s foot (about 12″). Indoors, try marking off a grid on the floor using painters’ tape.
2. Explain to your child that the first square represents the beginning of the story, the four middle squares represent the middle of the story, and the last square represents the end of the story. (The two sets of side-by-side squares separate the middle of the story from the beginning and the end.)

Directions

1. Beginning: Have your child stand on the first hopscotch square, holding three beanbags or other markers in his hands. For the beginning of the story, tell him a story prompt that includes a problem the character faces. You may create your own story prompt, use StoryBuilders writing prompt cards, or choose some of these:

• Chloe was playing tennis on her Wii when suddenly, the tennis ball flew out of the screen and into her room.
• Michael got a toy remote control spy plane for his birthday, but when he flew it, he discovered it was really spying on him.
• Ethan’s pillow told him exciting bedtime stories. Every night the stories got longer and longer until Ethan couldn’t get any sleep.
• Carrie invented a pencil that had a calculator inside so that it did the math when she wrote down the problem. One day, however, it started to answer everything wrong.
• Bella’s uncle invented a board game with pieces that could move by themselves. Bella would tell the pieces where to move and they would obey her voice. But one day, the pieces told Bella to be quiet! 
• Hunter bought a robot that cleaned his room. But last week, the robot forgot how to do the chores.
• The dentist gave Abby a new Talk-a-Lot Toothbrush that told her how to brush her teeth better, but one day the toothbrush said it didn’t like toothpaste.
• Sam discovered a new snack called Hunger Munchers. One small bite satisfied his hunger for hours. But after a few days, Hunger Munchers stopped working. In fact, with each bite, Sam grew hungrier and hungrier until he couldn’t stop eating!

2.  Middle: Ask your child to think of one detail to add to the middle of his story. This detail should include how the main character would respond to the problem stated in the story prompt.

• When your child thinks of the detail and states it aloud, invite him to toss a marker and try to make it land (and stay) on one of the middle four squares of the hopscotch boxes.
• If the marker doesn’t land on one of the middle four squares, retrieve it and hand it to him to toss it again until it does.
• Ask your child to think of two more details to add to the middle of his story. For each detail, have him toss another marker on one of the four middle squares of the hopscotch boxes. (More than one marker can be on one square.)

When all three markers are on the hopscotch boxes, direct your child to hop down to the other end, skipping over the squares that have a marker.

3. End: Have your child stop at the other end and stand in that square. Ask him to think of a possible ending to the story. After he has stated a possible ending, instruct him to hop back to the beginning, this time stopping to pick up all three markers.

Keeping Score

If your child enjoys keeping score, he may score a point for each of the following:

• Hopping from start to finish without stepping on a line
• Hopping from start to finish without stepping outside the boxes
• Hopping with only one foot in each square (except the first and last squares)
• Hopping from start to finish without falling over

Repeat the activity as many times as your child is interested, using a story prompt each time and practicing adding three details to the middle of the story.

. . . . .

Created by author Nancy I. Sanders, this hopscotch game is just one of the many fun and creative activities WriteShop Junior uses to teach and review writing skills at the elementary level. This game appears in Book D.

Photo by D Sharon Pruitt. Used by permission.

Does writing time produce a chorus of moans and groans from your children? Then now’s the perfect time to mix it up with a prewriting game!

Prewriting exercises provide great writing warm-up opportunities for children (and adults) of all ages. They can inspire ideas, spark creativity, and stimulate vocabulary.

Here’s a fun sentence-building game that also reinforces parts of speech. All you need are paper, colored pencils, and a pencil or pen.

It moves.

Have players write “It moves” on a sheet of paper, placing a period at the end.

Say: Change the pronoun to a concrete noun (add an article if necessary). Underline the concrete noun in red. (“The horse moves.”)

Say: Change the verb to past tense. Underline the new verb form in green. (“The horse moved.”)

Say: Add an “-ly” adverb that tells “how ” Circle the adverb in yellow. (“The horse moved gracefully.)

Say: Add an adjective. Circle the adjective in pink. (“The agile horse moved gracefully.”)

Say: Start the sentence with a preposition that tells “where.” Underline the preposition in orange. (“Over the hurdle, the agile horse moved gracefully.”)

Say: Add another adjective. Circle the adjective in pink. (“Over the low hurdle, the agile horse moved gracefully.”)

Say: Make all your nouns more concrete. Circle concrete nouns in blue. (“Over the low fence, the agile Lipizzaner moved gracefully.”)

Say: Make the verb more concrete. Underline the verb in purple. (“Over the low fence, the agile Lipizzaner jumped gracefully.”)

Say: Use the thesaurus to find a concrete word for a vague word. Circle your new concrete word in yellow. (“Over the low fence, the agile Lipizzaner vaulted gracefully.”)

Say: Change your sentence structure to begin with a participle (add necessary words/phrases so it makes sense.) Circle the participle in brown. (“Vaulting gracefully over the low fence, the agile Lipizzaner took the lead.”)

Keeping It Simple

With younger children, keep instructions simpler. Here’s an example Julie shared with me. Her family had a lot of fun with this!

Decided to use one of your “games” this morning as we got started with school. (I had to stop my husband from playing so the kids would have a turn!) We used “It moved.” Here’s what we ended up with:

It moved.
The caterpillar moved.
The caterpillar danced.
The tiny caterpillar danced.
The tiny purple caterpillar danced.
The tiny purple caterpillar danced in Chicago.
The tiny purple caterpillar disco danced in Chicago!

Ready to try this fun activity with your children today? I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at their renewed interest in writing!

. . . . .

The Sentence-Building Game is one of the many pre-writing exercises found in WriteShop I and II. Take a look at WriteShop I for your 6th – 10th grader. You’ll love the writing games and brainstorming worksheets that equip and inspire successful writers! 

Intrinsic motivation means children write without any additional outside incentive. No bribes. No treats. No money.

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.

Here’s a great idea for your 4th-8th graders: Challenge them to write 100-word stories! Not only will this activity appeal to your more reluctant writers, it helps drive home the importance of writing descriptive, concise sentences.

Directions

1. Read a few familiar folk tales, fairy tales, or fables together.
2. Have your children choose one of their favorites and place it in a new setting (in the past, the future, outer space, or a laboratory, for example).
3. Next, have them add characters such as a robot, scientist, detective, or superhero.
4. Instruct them to write a story that has exactly 100 words. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
5. Try doing this exercise several times. Then, ask your children to pick one of their stories and turn it into a polished final piece. At this point, feel free to let them use more than 100 words, but only as long as they don’t repeat main words and the extra words are really necessary to the story’s success.