Se7en + 1 Ways To Tackle Creative Writing…

This past year of school we learnt the secret of keeping going with all this topics that we start with enthusiasm and then fizzle: A little bit every day works for us. Never has there been a subject that this was more applicable to than with creative writing. There is no point in scheduling reading twice a week or map work on Mondays… we need to do a little bit every day. Now like many folk I would like to write a book one day – I know now is not the season – and I am not a natural writer, but I do believe that a little writing every day will stand me in good stead for the day I actually do begin. In fact I believe everybody has a book inside of them and given the opportunity to share our ideas or the skills to communicate our thoughts. Well I firmly believe that practice is a good place to start and I want my kids to have plenty of practice at writing… So should the book inside of them need to get written then they will have years of practice at writing under their belt.

Most school years we have begun our writing with enthusiasm and then faded, we tend to get so excited and involved in a project and then totally crash and burn. This past year we managed to go the distance and my kids have begun a writing portfolio of note… We began our school day with a little art because everybody loves it and it set the tone for a good day… then we did a little writing and then we got on with reading and bookwork. For the writing it was not something I necessarily taught my kids I was getting into the habit for myself as much as for them… And I think that may well have been why it worked – I was working alongside them, we had similar struggles and similar projects that we succeeded at. It was more of a team sport than me just saying “do this, do that” and then ticking it off on the schedule.

So here you go: Se7en + 1 Tips to keep you writing and enjoying it…

1. Create a writing environment:

To begin with we created a shelf for our writing materials – sort like things together! – and then we worked at the table together. While we have always had heaps of crafty materials available this year was the first time we had a spot that was specifically just for writing materials. A box of paper, lined or unlined, colored or not. Blank postcards and writing paper in case inspiration hits. And a jar of pencils or pens or whatever your kids like to write with. That is the writing spot… when we find a stray pencil then we know to return it to the writing spot. This is a screen free spot – no distractions, no internet – this writing was about creating and not resourcing so much. I wanted to emphasize the writing rather than the artwork so I purposefully kept it quite minimalist. But we all like illustrating our work so we added watercolor crayons for illustrating…


An interview for Christopher Columbus.
2. A Time to Write:

By scheduling our writing at the same time everyday it quickly became a habit. Now I have a tendency to “get things done” and I learnt to say “take your time” rather than “lets finish this up.” Not exactly the easiest lesson for me!!! Most of our writing projects take between fifteen and twenty minutes. By saying we had as long as we needed and taking our time was very enabling… we took the same amount of time as when I said we needed to speed things up… but just the idea that we could take our time, made the whole thing more relaxed and tension free.

3. Get Inspired:

There are so many things to inspire a writer… I gather up a couple of resources and drop them in our writing corner. Old photographs and albums, magazine pictures, old calendars… picture books without words, really anything that you might want to chat about with your kids…


A News Report.
4. A System for Recording Work:

We keep all our writing assignments in large journals. I have kept piles of my kids school journals from previous years but I have a feeling that their special writing journals are going to be just that: Special. For years to come. Any writing that gets done on paper or elsewhere is added into the journal throughout the week. Ownership is important here and my kids work hard to make their journals look good. I have one child whose school books always look like a scrap heap, with books literally falling apart from day one of the year… his book I tackle with tape and glue and whatever it takes to keep it looking good!!!



Word Play.
5. Writing Prompts:

There are few things more daunting than a blank page!!! If you google writing prompt and the age or grade of your child you will discover heaps of online ideas. I have managed to get away with:

• Imagine if…
• Describe…
• Tell me…
• If you could…
• Remember when…
• Who / What / Where / When / Why…

A Mini-Report in progress: Mind Mapping.
6. A Writing Rhythm: We have different writing exercises on different days of the week… and folk have come to expect certain assignments on certain days of the week. So while it changes from day to day, and we never dwelled on any one assignment for long we got used to a routine from week to week.
• Monday – A report back: An outing or an adventure we have experienced in the past week… a diary entry really. Here we add in pamphlets collected, photographs taken… maps and other artifacts collected.
• Tuesday – Current Affairs: We listen to the news… well we used to listen to a brilliant podcast: World News for Children… but they are no longer posting so we are looking for a new and wonderful listening source of news for kids. What we do is listen to the three minute podcast, everyone chooses a snippet and then we take the thirty snippet news flash and expand this into a story. For example don’t just say there was an earthquake, think about the location and the season, for example, and that consequently folk will be homeless and cold, it will be snowing or raining and so on… use the information we have to build a story… this has been one of our most fun writing assignments!!!
• Wednesday – Mini-Report Day: We are all for mini-reports, remember this is about writing rather than research. I know my kids can spend hours and hours on research as they browse through information… but I want them to know that they know lots of facts already… So we all pick a word or a topic… and then we mind-map… Choose three things about the topic that you would like to write about. Then choose three sub-topics for each topic… We turn each of the sub topics into a sentence and then three of them make a paragraph. We add an introduction and a conclusion to surround our three paragraphs and a mini-report is born. For my older kids I might sometimes make them make sub-sub-topics… then they can think about three chapters… it is an easy model to expand or contract depending on the ability of the writer. Very often my kids surprise themselves, writing about topics they didn’t realize they knew about.
• Thursday – Creative Writing: This is the day we may use writing prompts or photographs… often times we will take these bits of writing to create a newspaper… We also use Thursdays to write our not so traditional book reports for books that they may have read for school. Rewrite a section as if you were one of the characters… What would this book be like if it was set in a different city… If this book were a painting what would it look like… if this book were a meal what would it taste like… If we are going to write poetry then it would be on a Thursday. Everyone knows that on a Thursday we will do some seriously fun writing and we look forward to it after a week of hard work.
• Friday – Letter Writing: Fridays are an easy school day for us… so our writing is a quick letter shot off to a friend. All my kids have someone special that they write to and we have a pile of folk that we write to as a family, the names on our writing list just rotate round…

The morning routine: “I am going to wake up in the morning and then I will have breakfast and then I will do school.”
7. Error Free Zone:

Keep in mind that this is supposed to be fun writing… between fifteen and twenty minutes each day. It is not the time to learn that a story has a beginning, a middle and an end or the structure of the business letter. We do learn that in language arts… but this is the place for fun writing. I expect it to be fun… I don’t worry about spelling or punctuation too much – just ignore it and appreciate the effort that went into it. There is definite improvement as they go along. When my kids are small I scribe for them, but as soon as they are able I will write a little bit for them and then they can copy that into their journal. I do help with spelling if I am asked and will write a tricky word on a piece of paper for them to copy correctly – but thats as close as we get to perfection. I am far more interested in them having a piece of writing at the end of the exercise that they wrote themselves and that they enjoyed working on.



And the se7en + 1th thing.

8. Make it Fun: I work alongside my kids for this, if I am not having fun then nobody’s having fun. I am not expecting epic essays, one or two paragraphs are enough. I expect the work to be a good effort, nice enough hand-writing and good content but I am not expecting perfection. Sometimes there isn’t even a story… a fabulous illustration or a story outline, just a speech bubble added to a photograph. As the mom it is my job to lead the way and to inspire – often my fellow writers need little or no encouragement and other times they hit a blank and need all the encouragement in the world. For non-writers and I am sure every family has at least one… then make it short and sweet… as long as they write anything – shopping lists, fill in junk mail forms, anything… One of my non-writers has become a writer just because the habit has stuck… a little bit every day does eventually pay off.

So that is our creative writing journey so far and I have to say I think my kids are looking forward to a fresh year of school and more writing fun.