writing fun

Celebrate the National Day on Writing With Author Kate Messner

If you’re an elementary teacher or English language arts & literacy teacher of grades 3–5, you’ll want to know about this amazing literacy opportunity for your classroom! Do your students know that published authors go through the same writing process as student writers? (brainstorming, researching, planning, drafting and editing . . . ) Celebrate the […]

Summer Writing Ideas for Kids

If you’ve downloaded my free Summer Brain Camp printables, you’ll see the page of choices for summer writing ideas. Today I want to make sure you have the links for these fun summer writing activities. Hopefully, these ideas will motivate your kids to write this summer –or anytime. For me, writing has been a gift. It’s a way to […]

Christmas Writing Prompts for Kids

Use the motivation of Christmas to inspire children to write. You’ll find creative Christmas writing prompts for kids that they’ll love. Fun Christmas Writing Prompts for Kids 1. Letter to Santa Write a letter to Santa. Either write a list of what you want OR use your best persuasive skills to convince Santa that you […]

Bubble Writing (Lettering) Motivates Kids to Write (Mostly)

Are you finding it challenging to get your kids to write? Because me, too! Sigh. Which is why I’m happy about bubble writing to motivate them. Bubble Writing First of all, bubble writing is really lettering, or making letters fancy, silly, scary, poofy, etc. We found tons of lettering ideas in the book, How to […]

Art and Writing Project: When Mom or Dad Has Cancer

Art helps kids express feelings. For many children, it’s easier to draw an emotion than label it and talk about it. Certainly this is true for young children who may not know the feelings words yet. In fact, art therapy is used for grief, loss, learning disabilities, emotional issues, mental disorders, abuse, cancer, and divorce, […]

Sensory Sand Trays Great for Letter Practice

by Tricia of Critters and Crayons My husband and I first saw the Sensory Sand-Writing Tray at a Montessori school. We watched as the school’s director filled a wooden tray with sand and then used two fingers to draw a large letter. He explained that young children may have difficulty with fine motor skills (like […]

Teaching Parts of Speech

Kids do need to learn grammar, especially the parts of speech. Here are some fun ideas for teaching and applying parts of speech in a writing workshop. In my summer writing workshop, I had kids ages seven to ten. Find and Sort Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives First we looked for cool words in magazines. I modeled this […]

Children’s Author Says Write Alphabet Photo Books

Guest post by Esther Hershenhorn, author of S is for Story in our summer artist’s date series. I had great fun creating my newest book, S is for Story: A Writer’s Alphabet (Sleeping Bear Press, ’09) – especially once I focused on my book’s purpose. The purpose was offering Young Writers an A-to-Z journey through […]