As we all scramble to grapple with the new normal of our kids home from school, I’m thankful for the teachers in my life who have been doing this job for years. I can always count on them for great ideas, like these 10 writing exercises, from a friend and former English teacher who has had plenty of experience getting kids to write. (Middle and high school kids, even!).
Whether your kids have a distance or e-learning program in place and you’re trying to keep them a little busy, or if you’ve been left to your own homeschooling devices, these exercises are easy and fun, and might even get the whole family writing more.
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1. Family memories: Have everyone remember something about a past vacation or trip, and put together a story or even just a word collage. Or have them write about the dishes that dad cooks! What did you do on all your birthdays? What did we wear on Halloween? We often don’t stop and remember those things, let alone write them down.
2. Cut-up: Take magazine, newspapers, or old books (shhhh), cut out words, and make sentences. Then, arrange them into a story.
3. Start a story: Grab a book from the bookshelf, read one sentence out loud, and that’s the beginning of the story that everyone has to write.
4. Continue the story: Start with a sentence on a piece of paper, then each person has to add a sentence. You can do this out loud too. Hopefully you don’t have the Debbie Downer who always says “And then it died” but that just means more zombie apocalypse action!
5. Exquisite corpse: Here’s how this uniquely-named exercise works. Have the first person write a sentence on a piece of paper, then fold it so it’s covered. Pass it to the next person, where they get to write a sentence, then fold the paper. Continue with however people you have (or just go back and forth if it’s two people). Then read it out loud! It’s sort of like MadLibs, but with sentences.
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6. Acrostic poetry: My 11-year old did this one today. First up: Corona Virus. (above)
7. Family photos: Throw the photo on the middle of the table (or a phone with a photo on it) and everyone writes what’s happening and what they’re feeling. You can also do this with magazine pictures.
8. State of the union: This one is interesting! Write down different roles and have people write what’s going on with them with each role. For instance, if you write “Mother” “Daughter” “Sister” “Friend” “Sports Player” “Gamer” (etc), your kids will probably fall under a bunch of those, but they’ll have different experiences or feelings with each.
9. Famous people: Have to describe someone’s face without using adjectives or modifiers.
10. 5 senses: Describe a place everyone has been using all five sense.
Original ideas! It’s a lot more fun than regular essays! I remember that a few years ago I made a similar game for my youngest child – I printed (not cut out) some words and phrases so that he could learn to make sentences out of them. These were not standard “I”, “you”, “we”, “go”, “sit”, but a variety of words that could be used to compose a fairy tale. There were more than 50 of them, and the child liked to make unusual combinations – sometimes it turned out to be complete nonsense, but a grammatically correct sentence.
I think we should do it again and make a similar game, but with more variety. Maybe even make whole sentences to insert one ready sentence, one to write it down yourself, and then insert another ready sentence. And so on. Thank you! You have inspired me, I might say, with your ideas.