Kid writing lessons

20 Creative Writing Activities for Elementary Students

Writing activities have an emotional toll on young learners, given the sheer volume of letters to learn by heart, words to spell, and sounds to remember. Your students will be more excited doing tasks they consider easier, such as character description. Perhaps it’s time you considered introducing fun activities to help the learners in their writing. Here are 20 of our go-to fun activities for creative writing skills among elementary kids.

Create a comic book idea, leaving the speech bubbles around the characters empty for the students to fill. Alternatively, you can source the comic from your favorite magazine or author and rub out the dialogue between the characters for the learners to complete.

Learn more: My Cup Runs Over

Have the students copy a few paragraphs from a famous book. Ask them to erase words they wish to remove and replace them with a blank line. Under the space, the students should give a hint to indicate the required type of phrase or word.

Learn more: My Cup Runs Over

Select a new word for the learners and explain its meaning to them. Ask them to create a sentence using the new term. Tell them to practice writing an entire story based on this word. 

Learn more: First Cry Parenting 

Ask a reluctant writer to practice writing their names by fetching and arranging all the letters that make it. For an older writer, ask them to pick an object from the jar, redraw it and give a brief description of what it is or the scene.   

Learn more: Imagination Tree

5. Identifying Objects

This reading and writing game is suitable for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten-aged students. Ask them to color the object highlighted in the descriptive sentence. It enhances their fine motor skills, memories, and emotion.

Learn more: Kids Learning with Mom 

The goal of picture dictionaries will help early learners who are struggling with creative writing exercises and reading skills. Ask children to match the words provided at the top to the activities being performed in the pictures. This reading and writing activity can be developed for individuals, families, or the classroom.

Learn more: Childrensbooks 

Journal writing works for learners who excel in creative stories or drawing. Have your students engaged in daily writing tasks. For instance, what food did they eat for lunch or a boring character in a favorite piece of writing?

8. Roll a Story

Roll a story will have the learners enjoy rolling dice to discover the character or scene they will be exploring in their writing. Examples of a scene they can get include casino, school, or ancient pyramid.

Learn more: Teachers Pay Teachers

On a drawing paper, make a word entry and ask the pupils to highlight it with a paintbrush or crayon. These creative writing exercises' goal is to enhance the learner’s artistic, emotional, and fine motor skills.

Learn more: Little Learners

This writing game engages the language input of creative writing classes. Write the first scene of a story on a piece of paper. Have the learners come up with a sentence that continues the story. The paper is then passed on to the next child until every student has written something.

Learn more: Minds in Bloom

This writing activity's goal is to help children to improve their writing and sentence-building abilities. Ask the child to cut out the words at the bottom of the paper and rearrange them correctly to form a sentence.

Learn more: Twinkl

Creative writing prompts activities test not only imagination but also a learner’s ability to make conversation on behalf of characters. Provide an entry with a picture accompanied by 3-4 writing prompts to guide them in exploring the scene. A sample question for the scene above will be, “Do the lambs feel safe with the lion?”

Learn more: Homeschool Adventure

Help your kindergarten students in writing their names with this fun writing activity. Print out the learner’s name. Next, print the letters of the pupil’s name and mix them with a few random characters. Cut them apart and ask them to sort out the letters in their name.

Learn more: Simply Kinder

Writing cards helps students to engage in purposeful moments. Provide the learners with blank holiday or birthday cards. Ask them to draw or write something to the card’s receiver. Alternatively, students can design their cards and write down the desired message.

Learn more: Learn with Homer

Sit down with the child and help them write a list of healthy food items or other household objects you require. In the grocery store, have them cross out the items as they are added to the shopping cart.  

Learn more: Kids Night in Box

Engage your child’s reading and writing abilities by printing out a diagram of simple objects such as flowers, insects, or external human body parts. Provide a list of the answers to the parts and ask them to write the word that matches each in the blank space.

Learn more: Classroom Freebies Too

On a chalkboard, write down a word. Ask the learners to erase the word with a wet sponge. This way, the learners will learn how to design the letters of the alphabet. Although this writing activity is the opposite of copywriting, they both serve the same purpose.

Learn more: Little Learners

Test your student’s creativity by providing them with writing prompts that focus on an entire book, a song, or a famous story. For instance, ask students to write a story based on the ending, “And they lived happily ever after. " 

Learn more: Kid Pillar

Collect words or a group of words from a favorite story or song. You can either write them on a piece of paper or cut them out of a printed page. The overall goal is to rearrange the words differently to make an interesting poem with a unique writing style or genre. 

Learn more: Homeschooling Ideas 

Learners may have much to say in conversation prompts but get stuck when doing the actual writing. Sticky notes will help them in aspects of writing. A student can write anything ranging from a favorite author, a favorite food, or fantasy elements.

Learn more: Teaching Made Practical

10 Fun Writing Activities for Kids

2. Cards & Letters

When you assign homework, your students don’t always see the greater purpose. But, writing cards and letters is real-life writing with a purpose. Whenever there’s a holiday, you can use this method to get them to write and have fun while doing it. Let them design and write cards for Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and all other holidays. This practice will also help your students learn the standard format for writing friendly letters.

3. Fill in the Story

It was a sunny day. The little tiger just woke up… He saw the _____________, and he said _____________. Together, they ____________________________. Then, they ________________________. They had lots of fun. They agreed to ________________________.

You’d be surprised to see how creative your students can get with few simple sentences. If you need inspiration, then you can get some worksheets with blank stories.

4. Drawing Words

How would you draw the Moon? How would you draw the word “precious”? Think of different words. They can signify items, but you should also let them play with abstract concepts, such as love or beauty.

This activity inspires writing because it helps the students understand the true meaning and importance of every word they use.

5. Birthday Messages

Whenever someone has a birthday, get the entire class to write a message. You can get a big piece of paper where everyone will have space to write. You can also turn this into an art project, so the students will have an authentic purpose for writing.

The sentences can start with, “I wish you…” Let everyone express their message and appreciation for the friend.

6. Cut Out My Name

This is a great way to teach cursive writing. Get some paper and fold each piece lengthwise. Each student should write their name in cursive on one half, with the fold being at the bottom. Cut around the upper side of the name.

When you unfold the paper, you’ll get a symmetrical figure. Each name gives a different figure. What does it look like? A bug! Let them draw or paint on the clean side of the paper.

7. Chalkboard Writing

For this activity, you’ll need clipboards, chalkboard paint, a paint brush, tape, and chalks. Tape the clipboards on the sides, so you’ll get a nice frame for your board. Then, paint the middle with a coat of chalkboard paint. Let it dry, and apply a second coat. When that dries, you can remove the tape, and the chalkboard will be ready.

You can get all students to tape their own boards, and you’ll be the painter. When the tiny boards are ready, they can use them to write answers to your questions.

8. Write A Choose Your Own Adventure

Write a collaborative class story in the style of “Choose Your Own Adventure.”  Start a story and bring that story to a fork in the road.  Allow students to write the optional paths that the story can take. Once you have a couple of student-written options, continue the story in the same way.  If you have older students, it’s fun to put them in small groups. Tell the groups they need to have at least three branches, and when everyone is done, trade stories and read each other’s adventures. 

9. Vocabulary Challenge

Pick a new word for the students to learn. Think of something unusual. Explain the word. Tell them to use it in a sentence. Then, tell them to write a short story around that sentence. If you turn this into a team activity, it will be more fun.

10. Typing Challenge

The students love this one! Students have to learn how to type, right? This is a fun way to practice writing and typing! You can project a Google Doc and call up a student to write for one minute.  The next student will add on to what the first student wrote for one minute.  One after another, the students work together to write a (HILARIOUS) short story. They felt like real writers.  Grab a free digital composition notebook to use with this strategy. 

We, teachers, have to be fun. It’s a choice, but it’s the right one to make. With a bit of creativity and effort, we can make even the most challenging aspects of learning easy on them.

Lesson 3. Teaching writing to the smallest

In the last lesson, we have already started talking about preparing children for learning to write. In the following, we will continue this theme and at the same time move on to the practice of elementary education. As it has already become clear, preparation begins a few years before school. But many parents, in a hurry to quickly start classes, hastily study the methods, but do not pay attention to self-control at all, because. only it allows you to avoid making the most common mistakes. The most important of them is too early start of training.

According to primary school teachers, based on many years of experience, parents should not teach their children to write (especially cursive) at preschool age. And the categoricalness of this opinion, of course, is based on a number of specific reasons:

• Firstly, children under the age of five are simply not yet ready for writing due to age-related physical and mental characteristics. Often at this age, fine motor skills of the hands are not developed, which is why the mechanisms responsible for neuromuscular regulation and visual coordination do not work well. In addition to this, the wrists and phalanges of the fingers have not yet completely ossified.
• For teaching how to write each letter of the alphabet, there is a scheme on which professional teachers build their classes. Without special education, many parents teach their children incorrectly, which means that they master the wrong and ineffective writing technique.
• Poor handwriting is common among children who learn to write early. To master calligraphy skills, a child must be provided with classes specifically in capital letters for at least an hour a day, and preschoolers cannot be given such a load. In addition, all this time it is necessary to carefully observe how the child displays various elements of letters on paper, but parents themselves are not always able to follow this condition.
• Parents do not pay attention to the formation and development of children's spatial orientation. As a result, children cannot quickly and confidently navigate the characteristics necessary for writing (left and right, bottom and top, farther and closer, etc. ).

It is easy to see that the opinion of teachers has a solid foundation. However, this does not mean at all that you now have to give up and not deal with the child. On the contrary, you can and should do it, but you should follow the right path. Therefore, first of all, preparation, and only then - writing in capital letters. It is in this order that we will continue the conversation.

Contents:

• Preparing a child for writing. Block №2
• How to teach a child to hold a pen correctly

Preparing a child for writing. Block №2

The process of mastering writing and handwriting must be carried out correctly, and this is achieved only by performing specific actions. What should be done to properly prepare a child for writing?

1

Mastering the pencil

If you think your child is ready for new knowledge, solemnly hand him a pencil. Why a pencil, we have already said. Make sure that the child handles him carefully (do not get hurt, do not poke himself in the eye, etc. ). First, the baby needs to get used to the new object in his pen, understand how it is “arranged” and what they can do. And you show him that with a pencil you can drive on paper, which is why lines are obtained. By the way, the first letters can also be written in pencil, because in this case they are easy to correct.

2

Study - no more than 5 minutes at a time

When you show your child the outlines of block letters and help to deduce their elements, try not to tire him. It is best to write one line, and then take a break. As you remember, it is still difficult for young children to concentrate, so practice for 2-3 minutes (maximum 5 minutes) at a time, and then relax.

By the way, an interesting fact is that at the beginning of training, the less the child writes, the better he will get. Instead of bombarding your child with tasks and pages of letters to repeat on a letter, study a little and do not set too difficult tasks.

3

Master spatial orientation

Each child has difficulty writing specific letters: some, for example, write the letter “c” instead of the letter “d”, others write the letter “e” in the wrong direction, etc. Also, many “mov out” from the lines or are completely confused about where to start writing. To avoid all this, from an early age, teach your child the correct orientation on the sheet.

To develop the correct orientation, you can give your child simple tasks: ask him to look for differences in pictures, draw dots and sticks in the areas of the sheet you specified (bottom, top, left, right, relative to some object on the sheet or page, etc.). P.). It is useful to teach a child to draw large and small circles, and then compare their size.

Even when writing in block letters, it is possible to use oblique ruled notebooks with additional lines. Such notebooks are specially made so that the correct slope always appears before the eyes of the child.

4

Improvise with letter images

To help your child understand how letters are written, draw their images in the air. Initially show large letters by drawing them with your whole hand. Then reduce the size little by little. The task is to reach the point of using only the hand. Do this exercise with your child, helping him to draw invisible letters.

5

Highlight the best letters

We have already talked about the importance of encouraging a child even for the most modest successes. Use this method here as well. When a baby learns to write his first printed letters, most of them will turn out badly, but some will come out quite tolerably. Draw the child's attention to the letters that turned out well, highlighting them, for example, with a green marker for notes. Tell the baby what you need so that all his letters come out just as beautiful and correct. Focusing on successful examples, it will be much easier for him to learn how to write correctly.

6

Use pen tips

We talked about special pen and pencil tips in the last lesson, pointing out that they contribute to the formation of a correct grip. We also said that it is better not to be zealous with nozzles, and here's why. Constantly interacting with nozzles, the child gets used to them. Subsequently, he simply will not be able to write without them, and the writing object will hang out in his hand.

Continuing on the subject of proper grip, we offer several ways to help you teach your child to hold a pen correctly when writing.

How to teach a child to hold a pen correctly

The problem of incorrect gripping of a writing object is faced by both parents involved in the development of preschool children and teachers teaching in the lower grades. The fact is that it often takes a lot of time and effort to master the correct grip. As a result, moms and dads, seeing that the child is already writing well, grabbing the pen as it is more convenient for him, leave everything as it is. But this could be problematic in the future.

First of all, we note that, having learned to hold the pen incorrectly, the child gets used to it so much that even in adulthood he continues to do it. In addition to handwriting, this affects the health of the hands - if they are not properly gripped, they get tired faster, because of it, the wrists can ossify incorrectly and even develop joint diseases, scoliosis, and vision problems.

Therefore, you need to worry about the correct grip in advance, and much earlier than the child picks up a “writing stick” for the first time. Always pay attention to how your child holds a rattle in his hand, sculpts from plasticine, scratches with crayons, etc., because. these classes are already preparation for writing.

As for the signs of incorrect grip of a pencil or pen, it is not difficult to identify them. It is enough just to observe the child in the process of writing. An indicator that the baby is holding the writing object incorrectly can be:

• Pen holder in cam
• Pencil clamp
• Thumb below index finger
• Holding the handle with the index finger instead of the middle finger
• Finger position too close to or too high from the writing head
• The direction of the upper part of the handle is “from the shoulder”, not “to the shoulder”, as in the correct grip
• Too strong or barely perceptible pressure on the writing object
• Constant voltage writing hand
• When writing, the child does not turn the hand, but the sheet of paper on which he writes

If you notice something like this in your child, start correcting the grip defects as soon as possible. Five good ways will help you with this (they are suitable for correcting the wrong grip, and for forming the right one).

1

Tweezers

Prepare the handle (if the child is very small, you can take the body from the handle). Have your child grasp the pen with the three fingers used for writing and then rest it on the table. After that, ask the baby to slide her fingers down the handle and stop in the right place for the correct writing.

2

Crayons

This is one of the easiest ways to form a correct grip. The kid just needs to draw with colored crayons. But the crayons should be broken into several pieces about 3 cm long. The baby will not be able to take such parts in his fist, and it will be most convenient to take with three fingers.

3

Darts

When a child throws darts, his fingers hold them just like holding a pen. Buy a safe set of darts for kids and practice throwing them every day. Together with the correct grip, the eye and accuracy will be trained.

4

Circle and dot

Another easy way to teach your little one to hold a pencil or pen. Draw a colored circle on the upper phalanx of the baby’s middle finger, and on the writing object, a bright dot in the place where the object needs to be held. Let the child practice holding a pen or pencil so that the point on it is in contact with the circle on the finger.

5

Runaway Napkin

it will be inconvenient to work with a whole child. Take one half and put it in the baby's fist. Ask the baby to press the napkin to the palm with the ring finger and little finger, and with the other three to take a pen or pencil, but that the napkin remains in place, i.e. didn't run away.

Seemingly quite simple tricks, but they give very good results. Do not neglect them - and you will not have to spend time and effort on correcting mistakes.

Information from two blocks on preparing a child for writing and a block on teaching correct grip is enough, firstly, to understand the specifics of actions, and secondly, to start performing them.

In the end, they should lead to this result *:

• The child holds the pen correctly
• The child is guided by the space of the notebook sheet
• The child does not unfold the sheet on which he writes
• The child draws pictures that match the size of the letters without problems

*Don't forget about the information from the "Preparatory period" section of the first lesson

The above features will be an indicator that you have successfully completed the tasks of the preparation stage and have done your homework correctly. And if you are sure that printed letters are mastered enough (the child knows their elements, knows how to display them on paper, remembers the names of the letters), fine motor skills, memory, spatial orientation and coordination are well developed, and it will soon be time for him to go to school, you can, again - little by little, begin to engage in the development of capital letters. We will talk about how this is done in the fifth lesson. From it you will learn how the process of learning to write in capital letters begins, what manuals exist for this and what techniques are used.

Test your knowledge

If you would like to test your knowledge on the topic of this lesson, you can take a short test consisting of several questions. Only 1 option can be correct for each question. After you select one of the options, the system automatically moves on to the next question. The points you receive are affected by the correctness of your answers and the time spent on passing. Please note that the questions are different each time, and the options are shuffled.

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