Comments on: How Do You Get Your Kids to Enjoy Writing? Thursday Topics

By: fivekitten

fivekitten — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:55:27 +0000

My 9 year old hates writing (but loves math). She wouldn’t survive in a classroom for a day if she had a traditional writing workload. Three sentences are a lot to her. However, she loves to create stories – and once she gets an idea for a book or story I just let her go and she writes and writes. (I have to spell the majority of words for her). I don’t worry about punctuation because I’m just happy she’s writing! (We do study punctuation of course, but when she’s enjoying writing, no sense destroying the motivation!)

By: sarah

sarah — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:43:30 +0000

Jonah would love to write back and forth to Alex…if you need a pen pal….and Mattie would love to write to Brooke! The kids sometimes write to friends we have in Japan, and also to our old exchange student from Finland. Let me know if you want our address!

By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:34:11 +0000

There are several rubrics that are helpful….fill them out and you’ve essentially got the meat of a paper. However, they don’t necessarily give the child a real opportunity to develop a personal writing voice. Once in a while, especially with quick turnaround deadlines, in what can appear to be “cheating,” I type while my son dictates his paper. It gives him a chance to explain it in his way in a conversational tone as quickly as I can type (a lot faster than he can write). I capture it exactly as he says it, leaving it to him to edit after he’s got his ideas out. As he dictates, I ask questions as needed: “What do you mean by that?” “Can you tell me more about that?” “I don’t get it; why is that important?” He knows I’m modeling the thinking process. What would have been tortuous explanations he would have avoided expanding upon if he’d had to write/type, ends up getting explained and he begins to see how writing is a conversation with someone else and that he needs to anticipate the questions the reader would be asking.

By: Tips to Help Your Child Enjoy Writing |

Tips to Help Your Child Enjoy Writing | — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:34:59 +0000

[...] To find out more tips, check out How Do You Get Your Kids to Enjoy Writing?. [...]

By: Meaghan

Meaghan — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:41:38 +0000

These are some good ideas. Perhaps you can combine journaling with scrapbooking. You can have your child use old photos or take new ones, put them in a scrapbook, and write in elaborate captions that explain the event. He or she can even make a fictitious scrapbook where they make up events and stories to go with photos.

By: Nan

Nan — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:15:04 +0000

Our personal family favorite is to “write on the wall.”

I used large rolls of white paper and hung sheets of it on the walls (of the stairs at our house) and had the kids start writing. We left markers on the window ledge nearby to promote additions and editing. My daughter wrote the coolest poem this way – over the course of 3 weeks. She calls it “The Sun” but because of the time invested in it, it could also read “The Son” as in Jesus Christ; this was intentional on her part. She was just 11 at the time. It’s fabulous, if I do say so myself!

I don’t know why this is so fun to them, but the kids always like it and walking by it so often makes it hard to forget to do!

Nan