At “Take My Word For It!” our goal is to introduce kids to writing as an adventure, a chance to try on different personas, and as an outlet for their feelings, thoughts and ideas (even those they don’t want to share with anyone).
There are a lot of other folks out there who share our philosophy and so if you are looking for a way to keep your child inspired to write this summer, there are some websites and blogs you should know about. (Please keep in mind, this is just the tip of the writing-resource iceberg!)
Karen Benke is a Bay area teacher and author who is always up for a Word Party! Her two books, Rip the Page! and Leap Write In! are designed to give young authors lots of novel ideas to get them writing. Her website has an activity page that’s a great place to look for ideas to ignite the creative spark.
Creative Everyday Challenge. Leah Piken Kolidas’ website isn’t just for writers, but young writers can visit to find fertile soil for their creativity. Each month she posts a themed creative challenge, and, in her words, invites creative acts in “cooking, taking pictures, knitting, doodling, writing, dancing, decorating, singing, playing with your kids, brainstorming ideas, gardening, or making art in the form of collage, paint, or clay...”.
Scholasticfeatures a fun Story Starter page on their website – it functions sort of like a roulette wheel for story ideas that come up at the click of a button. You can choose prompts by genre: Sci-Fi, Adventure, Fantasy and Scrambler (a hodgepodge of all three).
Imagination Soup is a super-cool website with the tagline, “bite-sized wisdom for thinking parents”. Put together by Melissa Taylor, a Mom, teacher and freelance education blogger, it covers a wealth of topics including writing, reading, toys & games and tech. Her writing activities for kids page is chocked full of wonderful ideas that also include art and other DIY projects.
Magnetic Poetry words appear on many of our refrigerators and they make starting a poem or a story oh-so-easy. I own set of giant magnetic words that I often pull out to use in our writing workshops. Magnetic Poetry’s website has a page where kids can play around with an online set of “magnetic” words to create stories and poems.
Or visit ReadWriteThink, a website sponsored by the International Reading Association, where a community of educators working to improve literacy for every student post their innovative lesson plans, to learn how to make a kit of your own.
We have these, and other writing resources, posted on our website. If you know of one that we haven’t included, please let us know! We love to spread the word about like-minded folks doing outstanding work with kids and literary creativity.
-Sondra Hall Founder & Director, "Take My Word For It!"