Ways To Explore Writing With Kids from the blog of Mocking Bird

I'm not a Mum but i still wanted to share this with you because i think it's a wonderful way of keeping your children's minds active through the summer ... (not to mention my tiny little brain). It's from a wonderful photographic blog called Mocking Bird which i highly recommend checking out.

Ways To Explore Writing With Kids

WAYS TO EXPLORE WRITING WITH KIDS

by Amanda on July 20, 2010

Today I’m taking off the photographer hat and snuggling on my teacher hat. In my many years as a primary educator, my greatest love in the classroom came every morning when the kids and I would get out our writing books and create new worlds with our imaginations.

For me, writing is one of the greatest ways to get kids using their imaginations and creating. Every little kiddie is a natural born author waiting to have their ideas and stories explode onto the page.

It’s currently summer holidays in the Northern Hemisphere and the mid year holidays are wrapping up down under. Unfortunately, kids will lose some of their learning over a big holiday break, so it’s really great if parents can continue with activities to keep those little minds ticking over.

Here are some ideas to get kids writing:

This is just a tiny sampling of ideas to get kids writing. As a parent, I wouldn’t be too concerned about their spelling and grammar. Definitely help them out if they ask you, but at pre and infants ages (2-7) it’s far more important to just let them write. Their teachers will have set ways in which they teach them about spelling and grammar. The teacher’s job is to teach them strategies to figure out spelling and grammar when stuck on unfamiliar words.

You can of course remind them of these four rules:

Every sentence must have; a capital letter to begin, full stop at the end, spaces between the words and it must make sense. Obviously Pre schoolers and even some Kindergarten children are not going to be familiar with sentence structure, so helping them to simply write familiar words is more than enough.

As I mentioned in the Ways to Inspire Kids to Love Books post, the best way to get kids excited about learning is through being excited yourself. Use yourself as a model and show them that you love to write. Call them “writers” and “authors” to make them feel proud of their accomplishments. A little praise and encouragement is the best gift you can ever give a child.

Photograph taken with a Holga using black and white Ilford film- this was a love note given to me by one of my Kindergarten students. She and her dad left it on my car one afternoon. It made my day.