Writing+Activities

= Family Writing Activities  =

Click HERE for Tips About How To Compliment Your Child's Writing

**Family Journaling....Journals** Try this for a family project for a week. Each member of the family has a small journal notebook. Each day, for a week, spend some time together writing down what youu did all day. Include as much detail as you can. Children can write about what they ate, what happened in school, recess, after school, during the evening. Adults can write about work, commuting, errands, meetings, and evening activities. Be sure to journal through a weekend too. Use your family journals to record holidays, birthdays, and other special family times. Take time to share entries.

**Making Scrapbook Memories...Albums** Gather some photos, postcards, and other memories from a recent family outing or event. With your child, explore the pictures and material. Encourage your child to come up with words and phrases to label these items in a way that tells the story of this special time. Supply the special paper, tape, labels, stickers, pens, markers, and pencils. Together, create a page or two to add to a family scrapbook.

**Vocabulary Workouts...Reading and Writing New Words** Add new words that you encounter each day to a family vocabulary list. Put the list where you will all see it each day. Encourage one another to use the new words until they become a part of your speaking and writing vocabularies. Click here for a daily buzz word!

**Calling the Shots...All About Writing** With your child, decide whether you want to re-enact an actual family drama or act out a story that your child makes up. Let your child sit in the director's chair and call the shots. It's important that he or she tells the story. Either video record your family story or take photographs of the scenes. If you have taken photos, arrange them with your child's help to tell the story. Encourage your child to also write down the story. You may help with titles, credits, and any other special touches. Share the photo story with family and friends!

**Name that Adjective...Traits of Good Writing (words)** Help your child practice making word choices by describing objects in your home or around your neighborhood. One person selects an object- a tree for example. Another names a word that could describe the tree-leafy. The next person names a different adjective-green. You continue until no one can think of another adjective.

**Sentence PI...Traits of Good Writing (sentences)** Play Private Investigator with your child by investigating one of his or her favorite bedtime stories. Choose a section of the story, or the whole story if it's short, and count the number of words in each sentence. Look for patterns. Look for variety in sentence lengths and sentence beginnings. Listen for sound patterns and special effects in the language that make this book one of their favorites. Like Private Investigators, try to come to conclusions based on your research- uncover the mystery of what makes this story so enjoyable. Later, as you and your child read the story again, you may feel new appreciation for the author who carefully crafted all these smooth-reading sentences. (Also you can encourage your child to use some of the techniques and strategies you saw the author use in his/ her own writing!)

**Taking Dictation....Writing With a Computer** If you have a computer and can type, ask your child to dictate (tell you) a story a you type it. This way the storyteller (your child) is free to let his or her creative ideas flow, without worrying about spelling or punctuation. If you don't have access to a computer, take the story down by hand. This process could catapult your young writer to new literary heights that may surprise and please you both!

**Life Maps...Choosing a Subject** Children enjoy making life maps that begin with the day of their birth. Milestones on the life map can be yearly birthdays and other special or unusual events. Naturally, you can make suggestions. However, try to let your child decide what he or she would like to put on the map. Talk about possible drawings or photos that could make the map more interesting and colorful.

**Show, Don't Tell...Revising Your Writing** Start with a simple sentence that "tells" something. For example, "It is a cold day." These sentences are easy to generate. Now, take the telling sentence about the cold day and turn it into a "show me" sentence. Use the five senses to add description, and brew up a really see-your-breath, bone-chilling, finger-numbing, shivering, freezing, winter day! Compare the original telling sentence to your "show me" version!

**Refrigerator Kiosk...Publishing** Besides the classic refrigerator-magnet approach to displaying your child's artwork and writing, consider these publishing avenues: A binder with clear slip sheets featuring stories and essays, a video of your chid reading his or her story, a website featuring the story with any accompanying artwork, a copy of the story mailed or emailed to interested family.

**From Under the Sink....4 Types of Paragraphs** Plan a family gathering for telling stories. Each family member gets something from under the sink in the kitchen: sponge, floor cleaner, rag, detergent, etc. Begin by having each person describe his or her objects using words that realate to as many of the five senses as possible. Next, have each person, imagining to be this object, tell a personal story: "I remember when...," "I used to live on the shelf of..." etc. Have fun telling funny, sad, mysterious, or fantastic adventure stories. Then get scientific. Explain what this object is made of, what it contains, and how it is designed to be used. Finally, try to persuade everyone else to get this object, too. Consider what you would say in a commercial. Why do they need to buy one? How wouuld it make their life easier, better, safer? Any buyers?