Creative Writing for Children:  Ways To Get Kids Writing Creatively

What is Creative Writing?

Creative writing is a form of writing that shows imagination, creativity and invention to express thoughts and ideas in a piece of fictional writing.  Children often enjoy creative writing because they can use and develop their imagination and express themselves freely in their stories.

Why Use Creative Writing in your Homeschool?

Creative writing is an important skill to use within your home education.  From an early age most children have stories to tell and share.  

Embrace this fact and pursue creative writing from an early age.  If your children are not able to do all of the writing themselves then you as the parent can act as their scribe.  Have your child tell you their story as you write it down.  This act of storytelling is the start of creative writing.

Using Creative Writing in Your Homeschool 

Using creative writing in your homeschooling offers your kids a place to explore new ideas, express themselves freely and creatively and helps them to practice different communication skills. 

Ways to get your Child Writing Creatively

Creative writing is an enjoyable process that allows children to express themselves through the written word.  There are many ways to get children to think creatively and to enjoy creative writing and hopefully some of these ideas listed here will help spark the creative writing in your children.

Creative Writing Ideas for Children

• Write a story from the perspective of your favourite toy.  Describe the toys feelings, wants and needs. 
• Write a report on an imaginary country.  Describe whether the country is inhabited by any people.  Do they speak the same language?  What is the food like?  Is the country similar to your country or very different? 
• Write a descriptive piece of writing about your favourite season.  Why is it your favourite season? What is it that you can do or enjoy in this season?  
• Try writing a poem about your favourite food.  This could be describing what the food looks like, how it is made or even what it tastes like.
• Create an imaginary character and write their biography.
• Rewrite your favourite fairy tale but with a different ending.
• Make up your own riddles and write them down
• What if animals could talk?  What would happen? How would things change? This question can lead to all sorts of funny and interesting stories
• Start with a selection of items such as a football, a key, a toilet roll and a hammer.   Ask your children to write a story that incorporates all of the items.  The possibilities for this idea are endless.
• Describe what it  would be like to be a character in a book or movie? Kids can use creative writing to explore this fun idea.
• One morning you wake up to find that you have shrunk to the size of your teddy bear, just 20 cm tall.  Write a story about your adventures.
• For older kids, challenge them to write a mystery story featuring clues and red herrings galore.

A Favourite Creative Writing Activity in our Homeschool 

A favourite creative writing activity in our house is that we all write a description about a mythical monster that we make up.  We have to describe the monster in detail such as facial features., how many eyes, colour, shape etc.  The shape of the head and size in comparison to the body.

Everything for the monster has to be described.  Once the written part is done we swap description and someone else has to draw the monster from the written description. 

As you can imagine this leads to many funny drawings and realisations that something has not been described as creatively or in detail as it could have been.  

Give it a try with your children as it is a fun creative writing exercise and art lesson all in one.

Creative Writing Tips for Homeschooling 

Encourage your children to brainstorm ideas with you.  This is a great way to get involved in your child’s writing process and help them come up with ideas.

Help them edit and revise their work.  This is an important step in the writing process that will help your children improve their writing skills.

Remember to give them positive feedback.  This will help encourage your children and let them know that you’re interested in what they’re writing.

Encourage them to share their work with others.  This can be a great motivator for kids to keep writing. It also helps them get feedback from other people and learn how to take constructive criticism.

Let them see you, the parents write. This is a great way to model good writing habits for your children. Plus, it can be fun for both of you to share your work with each other.

For many children creative writing is not easy to do.  With the help of these writing ideas I hope that you and your children find ways to make writing easier.   Remember to keep encouraging and praising your children’s creative writing.  Creative writing is one of the easiest ways for children to express their thoughts.