Category: prompts

Writing Activities with Kids

prompts / random drawing / writing with kids

Writing Activities with Kids

Keep writing activities in front of the kids in your lives to reinforce the skills over the summer break just the same as you do with reading and math. These three skills cross subject matter regardless of the grade they are stepping into in the fall. Here are a few fun, imaginative ideas to pout into your bag of tricks. Design a cereal box complete with cover art, list of ingredients, a game or activity section and a recipe that includes the invented cereal. Provide a journal (any size that will interest ‘your student’). Add a fancy pen and send...

prompts / writing / writing process

Writing Warm-up Ideas

Like sports, it’s a good idea to warm-up before you begin writing. Here are a few 5-minute suggestions to use to wake up your writing brain. 1. Scribble. Write nonsense ‘words’ to free your mind of thoughts. 2. Write all the words you can think of that begin with “a”. Another time try other letters of the alphabet as well. 3. Think of a favorite character to describe without using color words. 4. Describe: your work space                      the weather outside a favorite food                         your best friend a childhood pet                       the best meal you ever ate a tearful experience               a stranger...

details in writing / musings / poetry / prompts

Found Poetry

I found this excellent resources for describing found poetry at www.waunakee.k12.wi.us/faculty/lcarthers. Here’s what was shared: Found Poem Instructions Find a couple random paragraph from a newspaper, magazine, book, etc. The selection should contain 100-200 words. You can also try recipe instructions, legal notices, and horoscopes. Read through your selection. Highlight or underline words, lines, etc that seem promising to you. Use what you selected to write a poem. You may add your own words, but no more than 50% of final poem may include new words. Your poem may be of any length, but it must focus on a single...

Mirror, Mirror: A Writing Exercise

prompts

Mirror, Mirror: A Writing Exercise

Think about this idea. 1. Stand in front of a mirror and pretend to be your POV character. 2. What do you see looking back through the mirror?  Describe it aloud. 3. Imagine a second character standing behind you (POV character). Share aloud what the new character thinks about the POV character. 4. How do your mirror images vary in what they see? Does your writing expose those differences? 5. Work through each of your major characters. Bottom line: you must know your major characters so very well that you can climb inside their heads. There is a richness that...