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Creative Writing Prompts:
Kids Activities, Ideas And Tips
Creative writing prompts are just what you need if you're struggling with a reluctant writer. Getting kids to want to write can be a difficult task so having lots of interesting activities and ideas they can choose from should really help.
I've got lots of kids writing prompts and ideas to suggest that have worked to encourage homeschool writing, and you can adapt them to different ages by altering the length and difficulty of the activities - but it hasn't been easy! My top tips are that writing should stay fun; setting topics that your kids haven't chosen themselves is exactly what you don't want - you'll kill any desire to learn.
If things aren't working and writing has become a battle ground, try to be patient.
Every child is different; maybe your kids just need a bit more time before they're ready to start writing.
So one of my best homeschool creative writing tips are to treat the prompts and activities I'm suggesting like a plate of food; see if your kids are tempted by anything on offer. If not, leave it for another day; I had to wait until William was about 9 before he liked the look of anything!
Creative Writing Activities
You'll see lots of creative writing tips and activities in our page on creative writing ideas, where I reveal the first topic that really caught fire in our homeschool - TOP TEN DISASTERS! The TOP TENS were a terrific hit; it's one of those ideas you can use as prompts to rate anything your kids are interested in - racing cars, soccer teams, fighter planes. Just sort them into different categories like Favorites and Killer Rating and write a bit about them. Tips: We started very simply with just numbers out of ten, but now we're looking at a homeschool TOP TEN FILMS with a resume of what each film is about and why we like them.
Try this fun story writing game. Roll the cubes and let the pictures act as writing prompts.
Write a cartoon. Tips: Very useful for writing prompts and ideas because you only need write short bubbles of words at a time.
Try lapbooks for prompts to encourage creative writing ideas for kids up to High School. Two which might inspire are our homeschool dinosaur lapbook and life in the rainforest. Imagine you were living in the rainforest and the loggers were coming...
Older kids might enjoy the one word site, which gives one word writing prompts and a blank paragraph to type in. That could be fun!
Keep a homeschool scrapbook. William started one on homeschool robots, which fitted in with his delight in learning how to build your own dinosaur robots but any ideas your kids are interested in will work fine. Catherine wrote one on Big Cats when she was tiny and moved onto a homeschool nature scrapbook as she grew older. Collecting crab claws, feathers and butterfly wings are great activities to bring science to life, as you'll see in our free homeschooling curriculum.
Fantasy Maps. Draw a fantasy map and name all the countries and lands.
Our homeshcool maps started very simple with poo village and goo swamp; but maps turned into marvelous creative writing prompts as the kids really got into them, as you can see from how big Catherine's is! Once the imagination is fired, you can invent all sorts of interesting places to visit; like Hambon, the land of hamsters or the homeschool forest of happyness (sic) and joy. Tips: To make creative writing prompts more tempting, it's great if you have some ideas which add in some fun activities. You can make your maps look ancient by using scissors to snip the edges and drag a few old teabags across to make them go brown.
Exciting creative writing activities can suggest all sorts of inspiring ideas. One of our brilliant prompts is an idea called My Life In A Box. Whatever your kids choose: their top ten likes, songs, their worst summer holiday - you should find the perfect prompts for all sorts of creative writing. Tips: you could pick a famous person's life instead and see what your kids come up with!
Write the script to help work out the action in an animation. So far, we've had two: Snuggles Gets Stuck and The Fat Man. Both classics! Tips: Animations are great activities and creative writing prompts because you don't have to write anything very complicated but you can't really work out what's going to happen unless you draw up a rough plan first - that's called sneaking in writing by the back door!
More Creative Writing Ideas
Another way to encourage creative writing without anyone noticing is to get your kids writing letters to their friends. Pen Pals are great prompts for this; you should be able to find an ad. for someone wanting a pen pal fairly easily. Tips: We discovered a homeschool secret - a great way to encourage the correspondence is to put a simple gift inside - Catherine sent a needle felted toy she'd made as you can see in our homeschool crafts easy for kids.
A nice variation which has worked really well in our homeschool is Pet Pals. Writing to Becky the mongrel, Izzy the Cat and Kinky the homeschool rat has been great fun; again, it helps if you can sometimes put a few dog treats in with your letter!
One of the great creative writing prompts is to write a film script. Top tips: get your child to think about the characters of the people who will be in your play and the plot. You can add lots of English activities into this idea; you could even turn this into a real film with scripts if you have a video camera.
Creative Writing Tips
Encouraging creative writing is about not making the activities and ideas too difficult. A few words on a picture is plenty to begin with; so long as your kids feel pleased with what they've done they will, eventually, want to write a bit more!
As we've seen, the most successful creative writing ideas are often sneaky; if your child wants their favorite meal for lunch can they write the ingredients on the shopping list?
If you want to follow a long distance homeschool writing curriculum I've got details of one which is highly recommended by homeschooling families and leads to the IGCSE English Language and Literature exams.
Creative writing prompts are all about inspiring your kids to want to write; everything else follows on from that.
