How to Encourage Your Child To Write (And Have Fun Doing It!)
Writing is a crucial skill that helps children develop their creativity, critical thinking, and communication skills. However, getting children to write can be a challenge, especially if they lack motivation or inspiration. That's where writing prompts can help!
A writing prompt is a suggestion or idea designed to help a person start writing. Writing prompts can help children find inspiration and get their creative juices flowing, even if they don't know what to write about.
Here's how you can use writing prompts to help encourage your children to write:
Make Writing Fun
Writing can feel like a chore to children, especially if it feels like work. To make writing fun, try to make it a game or a fun activity. Encourage your child to write about something they love or create a story about their favorite toy or animal. My favorite way to build excitement in writing is to have time limits for how long you can write, or if you have two or more people together, each person can write one sentence and then pass the story along for the next person to add.
Offer a Variety of Writing Prompts
Offering a variety of writing prompts can help keep your child engaged and inspired. You can find writing prompts online, or you can create your own based on your child's interests and experiences. Writing prompts will help the thought process moving as it provides the jumping off point, direction, or characters of the story. A great resource for writing prompts is this book “Creative Writing Prompts” or “5 Minute Daily Writing Prompts”
Start Small
Writing can be overwhelming, especially for young children. To help your child feel more comfortable, start with small writing prompts and gradually increase the length and complexity of the prompts over time. Changing the length of a writing session can make it easier or harder. You can also play with this by writing a story, and then asking to have it written in less, or more, words.
Encourage Them to be Creative
Writing prompts are a great way to encourage children to think outside the box and be creative. Encourage your child to let their imagination run wild and not worry about whether their writing is "good" or not. Suggest to them to write whatever they are thinking at the time, even if it is negative. The idea is that no writing is good or bad, and that the ability to just write what is on your mind can help inspire other ideas.
Celebrate Their Efforts
It's important to celebrate your child's efforts and encourage them to continue writing. Whether they write a few sentences or a full-length story, make sure to acknowledge their hard work and give them positive feedback. Try to create a “positivity sandwich” with your feedback, giving a general positive, a specific positive, a constructive positive based on the specific positive, and then a general positive. For example: “This story is really fun! I like the moment the cat falls out of the tree, and i was wondering what it would be like if the cat did other exciting things like this? Could they do three other things that may have been an accident like falling out of the tree? I really enjoyed how the cat character made me feel in this, thanks for sharing!”
Here are some writing prompts to get you started:
"Write about a time you traveled somewhere"
"If my favorite toy came to life, what would its day look like?"
"A day in the life of a superhero"
"Write a story about a magical creature"
"What would you do if you found a treasure chest?"
Writing prompts are a great way to help children develop their writing skills and unleash their creativity. By making writing fun, offering a variety of prompts, starting small, encouraging creativity, and celebrating their efforts, you can help your child become a confident and successful writer. So why not try some of these writing prompts today and help your child unleash their inner author!
