Get them writing!

Sorry it has been a while since I posted anything. I started a new job and it has kept me busy and tired! 🙂

Though, today I am back with three creative writing activities to do in class or at home.

1. Picture story 

For this activity you need a wordless picture book. An example could be Quest by Aaron Becker. You can introduce this book to the children or ask them to look at what they see in pairs. They can then construct the story and write it down. You can ask them to write the story for the whole book or just for a couple of pages and mix and match a story out of what the children have written. It will be interesting to see what they come up with and how different they can interpret the story.

2. Dream diary 

We all know how strange our dreams can be sometimes. For this activity the children will need to write down what they have dreamed for a week. Even if they can just remember one thing they should write it down. Then at the end of the week they can use these notes to write a story based on their own dreams. They can mix and match or if they had a very vivid dream they can use that one and add things if they see fit. There might be children who do not remember their dreams at all. In that case you can borrow and bring a dream dictionary and they can open this book on a random page and use that as a story starter.

3. Alien 

You can introduce this activity in different ways. You can ask the children to imagine that there is life on other planets and ask them what the aliens who live on that planet would need to know about us in order to not be afraid of us. Maybe you can ask the children to come up with a secret language that only the aliens can understand. Another way of introducing this activity would be to pretend that you received a letter from an alien in the post and to read this in class. You can then ask the children to write back a message and answer his questions. An example of a question could be: what kind of food do you eat on earth or what does a day on earth look like? You can make it into a bit of a competition by picking the best (few) letters at the end and pretend send those back to the return address.

I hope you enjoy these story starting activities! Please share if you want to add any of your own.